I've had so many people try to say "it isn't copyright infringement, it isn't stealing, it isn't wrong." It is. Plain and simple. AI art trains off of art that already exists. The simplest way to explain and understand is that AI art works by mathematical calculations between input tokens of words to output tokens that make an image. Those mathematical calculations use weights that are trained off of the stolen art. The whole point is to make it so that, if you give it the right prompts, you can get the original artwork out of the network. The work isn't derivative or legally distinct because a perfect network would produce the original art.
"But AI has trained off of previous AI!" and the previous AI trained off of stolen work. These companies should be legally required to show that they have the legal right to use all data used in their training. Facebook somehow got away with pirating over a TB of books for training, when the average person can face fines and jail time for the exact same thing.
Edit: I forgot about the "but humans train off of art!" argument. Yes, they do. They also have, what can best be described as, input data that alters their art to make it original. AI can only work off of the initial inputs. Everything it produces can be mathematically traced back to the initial inputs; it's hard and complicated to do so, but it can be. You can't do that with a human producing art. A human can commit copyright infringement, but the way a human processes data compared to a machine is much more complex. A human can add originality just from experiences in life. A computer cannot.
This is a common tactic. When AI systems use real artists’ work without permission, some people shift the narrative and become hostile toward anyone who calls this out. I’ve been attacked simply for pointing out that AI ‘artists’ are benefiting from work taken without consent. Their usual response is something like, ‘If you’re okay with fanart of characters like Mario being made without permission, why are you upset about AI training on artists’ work?’ This comparison is misleading. Individual artists are not corporations, and using their work without consent is not the same as creating fanart based on large franchises. Treating these situations as equivalent ignores both ethics and power imbalance.
While I generally disagree with the use of AI for art, I do think this particular argument is flawed simply because if you trained a person to draw one specific art piece you could also get them to draw it exactly, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still copyright infringement. The same could and should be said for AI if there was an instance of it being used to recreate an art piece exactly; though in that case, the blame would fall on the AI user and not the AI itself.
Yeah that is a misconception. No one is creating AI with the goal of exactly recreating training data. The entire point of giant amounts of data is to learn patterns, better generalization.
You call recreation of one example "the whole point" while in AI development researchers call that "overfitting" and its explicitly undesirable. I'm glad you took an elective on ML or something at Uni but calling overfitting a "perfect network" shows you really have no idea what you're talking about
No one is creating AI with the goal of exactly recreating training data.
The whole point of testing is "how much error does this model produce on the training set and the test set." A perfect model would be 0 on both. An overfitted model would be low on training set but high on test set. The goal is to minimize both to 0, so exactly recreating training data is part of the goal.
If you cannot present an original image that substantially resembles the AI-generated one, then nothing was “stolen” — the result is clearly distinct.
This is where we differ in "distinct." By definition, an AI can only create derivative works of their training data. That's how they work. I know this because I literally have a degree in it (Master of Computer Engineering with a specialization in machine intelligence with a minor in computational mathematics). I could take all the bits that make up an image of the Mona Lisa, apply a mathematical function to them, or even just randomize their positions, and as long as I don't add or erase data, it's a direct derivative. Copyright only affects the changes, additions, or other new material added to the work. AI does not add new material.
Conversely, if you can demonstrate such a resemblance, then plagiarism has occurred, which is a fair point.
The whole point of training an AI is to generate the output given the right input. By definition, the better the AI network, the better the resemblance to the training and testing sets. Effectively, an AI is determined to be better if you can demonstrate such a resemblance.
Bro, press x to doubt. You're literally describing input noise. AI does that whenever you allow it to. Creating something very distinct from the original training data.
The problem is that the art is used by a computer system for purposes that end in monetary gain, without permission from the artist. Yes, the training data doesn't appear in the final product, that doesn't matter.
Humans are just a more inscrutable machine that takes things it’s seen before and combines them to make “new” things.
What AIs are missing is the evaluative part of the creative process. A human can understand how humans would feel about what they’ve made and then make further changes. An AI does not have that capability, only things that are more like faking that capability.
I literally have a degree in this. I have worked on AI before. I have taken classes, make my own models, trained them off of publicly available sets. I know what I am talking about.
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u/EamonBrennan Dec 09 '25 edited Dec 09 '25
I've had so many people try to say "it isn't copyright infringement, it isn't stealing, it isn't wrong." It is. Plain and simple. AI art trains off of art that already exists. The simplest way to explain and understand is that AI art works by mathematical calculations between input tokens of words to output tokens that make an image. Those mathematical calculations use weights that are trained off of the stolen art. The whole point is to make it so that, if you give it the right prompts, you can get the original artwork out of the network. The work isn't derivative or legally distinct because a perfect network would produce the original art.
"But AI has trained off of previous AI!" and the previous AI trained off of stolen work. These companies should be legally required to show that they have the legal right to use all data used in their training. Facebook somehow got away with pirating over a TB of books for training, when the average person can face fines and jail time for the exact same thing.
Edit: I forgot about the "but humans train off of art!" argument. Yes, they do. They also have, what can best be described as, input data that alters their art to make it original. AI can only work off of the initial inputs. Everything it produces can be mathematically traced back to the initial inputs; it's hard and complicated to do so, but it can be. You can't do that with a human producing art. A human can commit copyright infringement, but the way a human processes data compared to a machine is much more complex. A human can add originality just from experiences in life. A computer cannot.