China Did A Cringe.

On the plus side, China also banned all AI content unless it is watermarked last year. So there isn't going to be a problem with people not being informed about what is and is not AI content. A significantly better position that prevents it from swamping human content because it's easy to filter out the AI works.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/china-bans-ai-generated-media-without-watermarks/

You are my favourite poster. Keep it up comrade.
- I just repeat what I see whenever it's relevant! I'm glad to the original comrade that posted this here at some point in time, because I definitely originally saw it here.
  I appreciate it anyway though!

All those western educated libs China has running around inside its pipes need to get their asses purged, this shit is embarrassing

Hopefully this is just Chinese liberals exerting what little power they have left and not a bellwether for some liberal resurgence on the mainland

This is a direct consequence of the post-mao reform period.
These liberal ideas are widespread throughout China, not part of some vocal minority. Liberal economics are taught in schools. The ruling class, as you mentioned, is taught in the western tradition. Regardless of the direction of the country or the intention of the CPC, people's day to day experience with the means of production is capitalistic, and they want to be successful in this domain. The media in China has largely taken a pro-US stance since the 90s and until very recently, most people thought it was a utopia (the majority still do), so people want to emulate that model.
This is not something a purge can fix. It's a response to the development of the means of production.
- The ruling class, as you mentioned, is taught in the western tradition.
  What is this even based on? Taking the Politburo as a sample of the ruling class, only 2 of 24 people have had university education in the West. A total of 3 if you count university in HK as "western", and only 4 if you count the one other guy who got a degree in Russia.
  If you're basing "the Western tradition" on the idea that universities in China are teaching along those lines then we're gonna need one big-ass "citations needed".
All those western educated libs China has running around inside its pipes need to get their asses purged
AI work can be copyrighted. Millions must be purged.

NF Xi -

Absent any more philosophical arguments, the material result of this approach will be to give AI companies a lot more money, power and influence, and take away benefits of the technology from citizens both in China and the rest of the world.

Rough translation snippet from the WeChat post linked on Twitter:

On the determination of intellectual achievement: "From the plaintiff's conception of the picture in question to the final selection of the picture in question, the entire process, the plaintiff has made a certain amount of intellectual input, such as designing the presentation of the characters, choosing the prompt's wording, arranging the order of the prompt's words, setting up the relevant parameters, and selecting which picture is in line with the user's expectations, etc.". The picture in question reflects the plaintiff's intellectual input, so the picture in question has the element of "intellectual achievement"."

This is indeed a very rare China L.

TIL if I make a program that just takes the Mona Lisa from a file and gives me back the Mona Lisa in another file with a bit of random noise attached that's now my IP as long as there was a text prompt where you have to write "Adult woman, oil painting, Renaissance, smile, landscape background, art, sunny."
- Yeah it's a bullshit ruling that is probably going to be reversed at some point in the future once public opinion demands it after enough artists have been fkd over. I swear a lot of courts right now are making decisions based on what-ifs rather than what these technologies actually do.
AI Art is Copyrightable but only if your prompt is at least 1000 characters long.
- 1000 Chinese Characters

Massive L, holy shit

This honestly might actually make me need to remove China from my list of places I'd like to move to. I'd already be struggling as a foreign artist, but to have to compete with AIs stealing my art and copywriting the stolen art I just don't think I'd be able to survive there. It's already tough enough in the west, having even more pro-business/anti-artist laws over there would make it impossible to make a living.

but to have to compete with AIs stealing my art and copywriting the stolen art
Wouldn't the copyright laws theoretically protect your art from being used also?
- No, because these AI aren't exactly transparent in what sources they use
- AI art is created as an amalgamation of different preexisting artwork, it doesn't actually create something entirely new. They are trained on artwork that actual artists create, but do not create things themselves, but if their output can be copyrighted, an AI could be trained on my artwork and create something reminiscent of my art style that I have no say or control over.
  It's kind of similar to when artists trace other art and don't give credit to the original and pretend they made it all themselves, except now the "traced" AI artwork now has legal protections.
  My Chinese isn't nearly good enough to read this law in the original at all, so I could be assuming a worst case scenario, but if businesses can copyright AI art, then they have no reason to hire real artists to work for them, when they could just get an intern to put prompts into an art generator all day instead. As others have said, this is very "business friendly" which means it is very anti-worker (Artists are still workers, even if we don't fit some narrow ultra definition of the term). A real unfortunate situation, no doubt because AI art is this new fancy thing that laypeople (including the politburo in China) don't understand and assume is some magical thing that creates art from thin air.
If this is aligned with the party thinking at all, I can only think that the hope is to become really attractive to silicon valley types to move their AI departments to China similar to how they got a lot of other tech while opening up. To do that through a court? Feels far too haphazard. And I'm unconvinced the US would 'allow' it. Either way, sucks for artists in the meantime. Hope you have some luck with your career as an artist. It's a tough field.
- Yeah, it's really tough to find work these days, I mostly just have to do weird fetish content that AI art can't recreate at this point.
  You can probably tell when I'm struggling to find work, I tend to post here a lot more lol.

With that and the Kissinger statement, China is on a cringe roll lately.

What is the difference between AI and MSPaint? Its all just digital tools to make images. Copyrights are dumb across the board but this is no more or less dumb.

Your take license has been revoked. You are no longer allowed to have takes.
- I have almost complete aphantasia and dysgraphia. I can describe a picture but I could never draw it even on a computer. Despite the technology to overcome my Neuro divergency being at my fingertips I shouldn't own my creations because you don't like the tools I used?
  Ableist Classist Luddite. "Art is only for the few who can dedicate years of study to perfect their technique and fuck any technology that makes art more accessible. oh and digitally made music isn't music."
All of these AI tools are based on models trained on illegaly obtained samples from non-consenting artists. This is the key issue behind copyright. Its both the issue of failing to protect artists original copyright while granting copyright to art created through these tools.
In a sane and honest economic system you'd hire a lot of these artists to create art specificaly for this, seek their consent and pay them according to the number of samples they have on the model, or respect their choice if they don't want their art sampled period. These are just naive suggestions I'm sure there are better proposals too.
If you took all the steps above people would be a lot more open and positive about it. At the end of the day these tools are impossible to stop but it is the openly brazen lack of morality and justice of capitalism here that makes it obvious for people.
Corporations cried about piracy since the rise of fucking VHS tape recorders 30 or 40 years ago. They lied and manipulated the narrative of digital piracy in the early 2000s, but now it is 2023, the internet is old now so it is suddenly not piracy when you scrape millions of pieces of art from the web.
I think a complete no copyright stance would be the most realistic. If we assume you'll never be able to completely make sure someone didn't plagiarize or "reference" some prior art then at least don't make it worse by endorsing a tool built on entirely the premise of referencing and plagiarizing previous art.
And this is also seperate as to whether these tools are good or bad.
- illegaly obtained samples
  If you post things on the internet they aren't private. Is my eyeball illegally obtaining samples when I scroll instagram? It surely has an influence on my creations as much as it would on an AI.
  AI image generation is a tool. Yes it makes image generation super easy and accessible to people without technical skills but so did Photoshop so did the camera so did fucking crayons. AI assisted art is art just as any other digital art is art. A person making an image with the help of AI is an artist and deserves the rights to their product the same as anyone else.
But it's not the same as MS Paint. MS Paint requires you to do something to create something in it. AI is trained on other art and recreates it. It'd be like copying a picture of Goku from s01e01 of Dragon Ball into MS Paint, using the paint bucket to change his hair color, and claiming it as copyrightable.
- so AI art will make all my dreams come true and I don't even have to do anything? AI uses data from other images to make new images. An artist's input is required to make it art even if they simply curate. There is a whole branch of art called "found object" which can and often is simply finding an item and displaying it with no modifications.
  it'd be like copying a picture of Goku from s01e01 of Dragon Ball into MS Paint, using the paint bucket to change his hair color, and claiming it as copyrightable
  Yes you can use AI for copyright infringement but you can do that with anything. You could draw goku with different hair with pencils and try to copyright it and have the same results.
  none of this addresses why a person using AI making a new and orriginal image shouldnt be entitled to the same legal rights as anyone else making an image any other way.
The issue here isn't individuals using AI to make art, you can make AI art to your hearts content, print it out, frame it. I don't care.
Problem is a bunch of companies are trying to replace artists with AI. AI doesn't create original art, or collages art from other artists together. This means if, for example, Raytheon used AI to make an add, and a big chunk of that ad is from a painting I made, I can't object to a piece of my art being used to sell bombs.
Even collage art made by actual humans doesn't get used in corporate advertising much for the same reason, if an artist sees their work being used in the college they may object to it. This is less a problem with independent artists. I actually make college art myself.
And while I love showing it to people I'm very hesitant to use it in any context where I may directly profit from it cuz I wouldn't want to offend any of the people who made the original images. I doubt it would happen cuz generally I take material from advertising and change the context enough that the original creator probably wouldn't recognize it. Thing is I'm a human, I can understand that context and make a judgment call about it, and other humans can object if they disagree with my judgment about it and try and hold me accountable. An AI wouldn't be able to do that.
I'd have less objections to AI art if it was always clearly watermarked (which China is apparently trying to do) and it was always clear who the person who generated it was, but right now AI is just pumping out tons of images with no way for artists to know if their images were used in it and who's profiting from it.
- The issue here isn't individuals using AI to make art,
  That is exactly the case here. There are no AI companies involved in the legal case in question. It is a case where one person used AI to make an image and another person took the image and reposted it for their own profit without permission.
All of these AI tools are based on models trained on illegaly obtained samples from non-consenting artists.
I have an issue with that argument. Human artists train on "illegally obtained samples from non-consenting artists" all the time. Did your favorite artist ask Toriyama for consent before copying his style? When an artist inspire their style on old Disney movies, are they doing something wrong? Machine learning is not different from human learning, it's just faster.
- Machine learning is not different from human learning, it's just faster.
- Machine learning is not different from human learning, it's just faster.
  citation needed
- Disagree 100% wow
- A human brings experiences into the equation and changes things.
  What does an AI bring that isn't just other stolen art?
Jones, you've made just shy of 30% of the comments in this thread. Don't you think it's about time to take a break on the topic?
- I think I am just about done.
The difference is that AI conglomerates societally accepted perspectives on concepts and presents those based on the words you input. MSPaint requires you to directly portray your own conception of those concepts instead.
Wankery over the nature of art side, the issue is fundamentally one of automation and use. These companies do not want to use AI art the way you use AI art, they want to fully automate the artistic experience of portraying one's own concept out of reality entirely, because it is cost-ineffective. You really think these people are thinking about their prompts or whatever? Nah, execs are just going to use it for marvel slop.
Yes, our current conception of art is problematic and ableist. We put far too much stock into what some random old white dude thinks is objectively good art or not. But I think that's the root issue with a lot of these AI models- They substitute actual artistic decisions with pure, automated, technical skill.
You drawing a single squiggly line will be far more artistic than anything an AI model shits out based on socially accepted definitions. No one is coming after you. Instead of defending the usage of a technology that will directly harm millions of artists, and the automation of the creative process, the manual execution of which, which regardless of how you're doing it is generally considered important to human health, we should go after the insane and outdated concepts of artistic "quality" that ended up making people not only think that AI art is "good", but also that people with IE aphantasia or shaky hand's can't produce "good" art. Of course they can produce good art... Art isn't about correct lighting or perspective or whatever the fuck, it's about one's own desires and creative expression. This is why I get a sinking pit in my stomach whenever people make fun of AI art's depiction of hands or whatever. The problem isn't the AI's technical mistakes, it's that it doesn't care about what it's doing!
AI Art CAN be a tool for this. It could be used fundamentally similar to synthesizers or song samples or collage art or any number of automated processes that are merely used to create actual art. If you have aphantasia and you want a solid reference, that's an amazing usage for AI art. If you have shaky fingers and need to use ai art directly to generate linework for painting, that's also (IMO) a fine use for AI art. Even just posting flat out pictures generated by AI could be art, if framed correctly, sort of how people can remix or use 1 single sample in ways that are interesting.
The problem is that it's trying to replace the creative process of interpretation, and threatens the complete death of the creative sector. This is blatantly horrifying and is something we should not support.

Nah, AI is cool and at some point it will be good. There will soon come a time when any Chinese netizien could make their own marvel move and with a legal framework like this Hollywood will have no recourse

Akshully any new technology that takes work away from artists is automatically bad. That's why nobody on Hexbear uses a camera and commissions portraits from local artists out of principle instead.
- Yeah, using a camera is exactly the same as buzzword “AI” that’s scraped millions of images of art for data without the consent of the artist, to better replicate that human made art without having to pay a human, just to maximize profit. Exactly the same. Fuck off

machine learning is going to get so fucked up 3,5,10 years from now when it's all AI bubble body crap and there's nothing left to "learn" from

also, BIC is a sub-section of the courts system there. It's not Xi (the president, but it's not a single-rule monarchical dictatorship ffs), or the CCP as a whole, which is a MASSIVE beast.

It's like how USA has federal, state, family, work comp, veterans, etc. all different court systems. different from congress, executive, agencies, etc.

here's to hoping the legislative NPC steps in and tells the BIC to fuck off, unfortunately i wouldn't hold my breath tho :(

People really do be applying the infinite growth mindset of capitalism to everything else in existence

Yikes...

Rare China L

C'mon Xi you can do better than this.

Alright mates let's see those indents make a rainbow, it's time for another struggle session.

Well that's sad :/

This is my new favorite struggle session.

- Those are my favorite kinds of struggle session. I was that guy when it was the Romanov session.
- dude went full leeroy jenkins

Can't win 'em all, I guess. Even papa Xi is bound to miss sometimes.

checkmate tankies

Yeah but how are we supposed to steal IP if we don't recognize it as IP first? Ever think about that?

Joking aside, I hope it gets overturned or the government introduces legislation against it.

If I were to give this the most ludicrously charitable read, it's easier to keep track of what is programmatically generated if your companies are willingly registering it with a government body.
but yeah, this is just silly

Machine translation of the non PDF part of the original source social media post (if anybody cares): https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Wu3-GuFvMJvJKJobqqq7vQ

Judgment on the first case of copyright infringement of AI-generated images

knowledge center 2023-11-28 10:02 Posted on Zhejiang

Recently, the Beijing Internet Court involving artificial intelligence-generated images ( AI painting images) issued a first-instance judgment on a copyright infringement dispute AI-generated images . . It is reported that this case is the first copyright case in the field of

The plaintiff, Mr. Li, used AI to generate the pictures involved in the case and published them on the Xiaohongshu platform; the defendant, a blogger on Baijiahao, used the pictures generated by the plaintiff's AI to accompany the article, and the plaintiff sued.

The trial held that the artificial intelligence-generated pictures ( AI painting pictures) involved in the case met the requirements of "originality" and reflected people's original intellectual investment. They should be recognized as works and protected by copyright law .

Image

Regarding the identification of intellectual achievements: “ From the time when the plaintiff conceived the picture involved in the case to the final selection of the picture involved, the plaintiff has made a certain amount of intellectual investment, such as designing the presentation of characters, selecting prompt words, and arranging The order of prompt words, setting relevant parameters, selecting which picture meets expectations, etc. The picture involved reflects the plaintiff’s intellectual investment, so the picture involved meets the requirements of “intellectual achievement.”
Regarding the determination of "originality": " The plaintiff designed the picture elements such as the characters and their presentation through prompt words, and set the picture layout and composition through parameters, which reflected the plaintiff's choice and arrangement. Another On the other hand, after the plaintiff obtained the first picture by inputting prompt words and setting relevant parameters, he continued to add prompt words, modify parameters, continuously adjust and modify, and finally obtained the picture involved. This adjustment and modification process also reflects the plaintiff’s Aesthetic choice and personality judgment... The pictures involved in the case are not "mechanical intellectual achievements." In the absence of contrary evidence, it can be determined that the pictures involved in the case were independently completed by the plaintiff and reflect the plaintiff's personalized expression. In summary, The pictures involved in the case meet the requirements of "originality".
Regarding the identification of works: "When people use artificial intelligence models to generate pictures...it is still essentially people using tools to create , that is, it is people who make intellectual investment in the entire creation process, not artificial intelligence models. Encourage Creation is recognized as the core purpose of the copyright system... Artificial intelligence-generated images, as long as they can reflect people's original intellectual investment, should be recognized as works and protected by copyright law ."
Regarding the identification of works of art: " The pictures involved in the case are graphic art works with aesthetic significance composed of lines and colors, and are works of art. At the same time, when the pictures involved in the case can be attributed to a specific type of work, the "other works clause" does not apply "Necessity of protection, it does not belong to "other intellectual achievements consistent with the characteristics of the work."
Regarding the determination of copyright: “The plaintiff is the person who directly set up the artificial intelligence model involved in the case as needed and finally selected the pictures involved. The pictures involved were directly generated based on the plaintiff’s intellectual investment and reflected the plaintiff’s personality. expression, so the plaintiff is the author of the pictures involved and enjoys the copyright of the pictures involved .”