A Poll On The Use Of AI Art In TAS Products

[Arkathan]

The nutty Ninth allowed AI to train on literature, because it was transformative. Others in the US and Europe have ruled on copyright.
One AI got slapped for using Westlaw footnotes in training.
So some AI companies have started CYA by seeking licenses for training.

The use of AI to replace humans in Humanities is nothing short of dystopian.
AI should be working on tech advances, especially in energy. THAT is how you truly free people. Unlimited clean, cheap energy.
Allowing AI to take all of the jobs worth doing simply makes everyone a slave to whoever is handing out the free stuff.

Don't think for one second that the people who want you under their thumb will refrain from using a complicit media to distribute deep fake videos as fact (as opposed to obvious satire) in order to control public opinion. They have already proven their proclivity to push lies for years after the documents exposing their deceit have gone public.

 

[rinku]

As a point, you can't prevent AI being trained on public domain material. Most stuff considered Literature is in that basket, as is the bulk of text produced prior to 1950. You either ban that use of AI outright, or not.

 

[Condottiere]

That particular nag has already bolted the barn, and then returned to burn it down.

China isn't particular about copyright, and the Americans have been bought off.

 

[Arkathan]

As a point, you can't prevent AI being trained on public domain material. Most stuff considered Literature is in that basket, as is the bulk of text produced prior to 1950. You either ban that use of AI outright, or not.

I think the cutoff is a little further back. Old School Mickey just recently went into Public Domain. I know Disney played shenanigans to delay it, but several authors I was looking for were still not public domain a few years back. And the ninth didn't limit the works to public domain, although other courts did.

 

[rinku]

Since it's usually based on date of death of the original author it can vary a lot. Tom Lehrer's 1950's and 60's songs would not be public domain for a long while yet, except that he released his catalogue to PD before his death in July 2025.

On the other hand, George Orwell died in 1950 and Nineteen Eighty Four (published 1949) passed into the public domain in the UK and Europe (+70 years from author death) from 1/1/2021, though it's still in copyright in the US until 2044 owing to the Disney shenanigans you mentioned. It became public domain in basal Berne Convention countries (+50 years from author death) twenty years earlier on 1/1/2001. Currently those include New Zealand and Canada. Australia went from +50 to +70 in 2004 but the change was not made retroactive, so Nineteen Eighty Four is also in PD here.

TLDR: I'll stand by my observation that the majority of text produced before 1950 is in public domain. But yes, there's still a lot that remains under copyright, especially in the USA.

 

[Vormaerin]

lol i still say before someone complains about AI they should be required to give up their cell phones and smart tvs

Done. Now what?

 

[Arkathan]

Yeah, I disable AI assistants on the phone, and use the TV as a streaming screen or for DVDs. The "smart" crap is useless.

 

[JupiterIndustries]

These discussions are nearly always exhausting, surprised it's still going on on here from when I last saw it and posted about it.

My view at this point in time is there's a spectrum, and being at either end of it is not a good thing.

I wouldn't like to buy a Mongoose product which uses purely AI generated art, but at the same time, I don't agree with Mongoose's line of banning it outright for TAS when my understanding is that they use AI assisted tooling (as most people do nowadays since it has become so prevalent).

Anybody using technology to augment the making of solutions in general is doing something which might have been done historically with more people or more effort so to start drawing the line of ludditism now seems like a very weaksauce thing to do.

I would have a difference of opinion (hence why there's a spectrum) on Mongoose using purely AI art etc. when they have double figures number of people working for them compared to a TAS creator who has themselves, or maybe a few people they can rely on.

The problem as I see it when it comes to art is that there's no happy interim between outright decimation of the market if AI is allowed on TAS compared to inflation of prices for art to unreasonable levels for smaller TAS based projects. I would prefer the latter than the former, so even though I disagree that it should be disallowed, I understand in retrospect why Mongoose did that.

That being said, I do not believe that anybody has a leg to stand on when it comes to the discussion about fair use and theft within the context of the LLM's. I am very uncomfortable with companies of any size dictating freedom of usage for transformative means. There is ultimately nothing stopping anybody from training an LLM model except for capacity of capability to then further utilise that for creative and technical means.

In any case, the entire debate has become incredibly toxic. One end of the AI spectrum believes that it's never acceptable and the other thinks it's always acceptable. I have to state that I am more so, but not wholly, on the later side rather than the former because ultimately freedom and progress of the whole has to take priority over protecting a small minority, even if ultimately corporate interests also benefit from such freedom.

I also believe that other priorities, such as the energy utilization and environmental impact of AI (although that's not just limited to AI and there are potential answers, scientist I am not though) are more important than purely capitalistic arguments over copyright and such things.

I am probably not going to enter a debate over this so just take the comment as is, it's not supposed to convince anybody in the argument, it's just my view.

 

[JupiterIndustries]

Yeah, I disable AI assistants on the phone, and use the TV as a streaming screen or for DVDs. The "smart" crap is useless.

I disable stuff like this for different reasons, I'm very much a "Rossmanite" in that companies interests in how I'm using the products end when I buy them unless I opt in to use their services for whatever reason.

I prioritise open source and free software because I do not trust companies, but if there is utility in certain things then I will use them. They are not universally useless.

 

[rinku]

If you want an acid test, I think it would be "is this going to put someone out of work?"

AI tools that make a creator more productive probably pass that test. That ranges from autocorrect and grammar correct, through better search engines, up to an assistant you can engage with to spitball ideas and suggest stuff. Ideally it allows an author to spend more brainpower on oversight and self-editing than grind. If they're already a hack, nothing much is going to fix that, however.

But it's an uncomfortable fact that over time, processes change and jobs become obsolete. Factory worker used to be a vocation for a large percentage of western workers. Now it's mostly robot work.

Any office used to employ large typing pools.

Telephone switchboard operators aren't a thing anymore.

We SHOULD be critical of this, but choose your battles, too. Is it *really* a human job, or is it just a job that humans have had to do? I tend to class things like comic lettering and inking in the latter category, for example. Most mainstream US comic artists would probably prefer to do their own inking, but the production requirements have forced them to collaborate. If AI can be trained to do that job off their pencils, under their own supervision and approval, I really don't see any issue.

 

[swordtart]

As the public domain and copyright laws vary from country to country how do you determine if an AI was trained ethically on only non-copyright work. If I listen to music in China that would be considered copyright theft in the US say, I not committing copyright theft as I am subject to the laws of the country I am in. If I travel to the US and then produce a work influenced by that music (vs a copy), I am not committing copyright theft.

Once you start basing arguments on morality rather than law you are into religion and philosophy and that is entirely subjective.

People have always made their own furniture, but the best furniture was produced by craftsmen who were occasionally genuine artists and could only be afforded by the wealthy. As time and technology moved on good furniture got produced by skilled machine operators and could be bought by the middle classes but genuine artists still produced furniture for the wealthy. Now most furniture is produced by robots and can be bought by almost everyone, genuine artists still produce furniture for the wealthy (sometimes purely as a tax dodge).

Everyone can and always could make their own serviceable furniture they just need(ed) to make the effort to find out how and pay for materials and tools (which could be minimal). No-one "needs" furniture produced for them, it is bought for convenience (it cost less to buy than the loss of wages required to make it themselves) or because it is "nice" (which is an entirely person preference) or for bragging rights (or possibly as a "patron of the arts" which is just another form of bragging rights).

The artists producing work of a quality to attract the wealthy can command comparatively higher prices than their medieval equivalent (who were arguably exploited - just like everyone else was). There are probably more wealthy people (and some of them are absolute trash darling) so true artists are not suffering and even some of the middling sort are likely getting more work than they would have done. We can dismiss good art from the argument, there always was and always will be a market. The crux of the argument now are "is it nice?" which is subjective and cannot be morally imposed on others, or is it cost effective. If I could never afford an artist then I am not putting one out of work, if you want to work for the low paid, you have to produce work they can afford and that generally means hack work that is just another job.

To me that means the moral choice is comparing the personal preferences of the "artist" to the personal preferences of the art buying public. If we are talking work that can only be profitable if it is reproduced many times (art for publications or maybe prints) then sustaining that sort of art requires more buyers than producers and we are weighing the preferences of the many to the preferences of the few.

If you want to be an Artist then you need to produce work that is competitive or so "nice" that you can afford to be non-competitive. Otherwise it is a just a job preference and you can join the queue of everyone else who has to reskill to serve the machines or upskill to out-perform them.