Louis Ingenthron @LouisIngenthron@social.cleverlibre.org

Were there any ominous shadows in its last contact?

There's a black & white cat in our neighborhood (I call him Ghostface because his face is white framed in black), and according to my security cameras, he loves to hang out on the hood of my black & white car at night.

Every time technology enables the masses to do something that was once a specialized skill, we have uproar. #AI is just the latest in humanity's long history of enabling the democratization of skill.

Now artists are crying left and right about how awful AI is and how it's taking all their work, but there's two important points to remember:

1) If the requirements for a visual product don't include heart and soul, then why hire someone to put heart and soul into it? Most commissioned "art" these days just needs to not look like shit. No wonder we're happy to switch to an algorithm that responds instantly to our requests with no snark.

2) Now that the tools have raised the tide, we can all have better baseline/placeholder art, and any of us can use these tools to generate it. That's a good thing! But it doesn't mean we won't ever need artists.
We mass-produce furniture, but that doesn't mean woodworking artisans have vanished. We mass produce food, but local honey is still amazing. We mass produce clothing, yet designer gowns continue to be made.
There will always be those who keep the old ways alive, and others who are willing to pay for that higher quality. So, the question becomes: Are you good enough to be better than the machine, or are you complaining about not getting work making shitty logos for the rest of your life?

@kegill No, but I think the AI companies training their models on these likenesses, without a large enough dataset to produce truly unique images, may run afoul of the "knowingly" clause.

As for likeness... that is an interesting question. If someone uses my face but photoshops my nose, is that my likeness? Are pictures of voldemort still Ralph Fiennes' likeness? Do screenshots of Avatar contain Sam Worthington's likeness?

@kegill No, I'm not, but the example it gives at the bottom of the section on the US, citing California's law, seems to fit perfectly with the facts in the article (other than jurisdiction, of course):

"Any person who knowingly uses another’s name, voice, signature, photograph, or likeness, in any manner, on or in products, merchandise, or goods, or for purposes of advertising or selling, or soliciting purchases of, products, merchandise, goods or services, without such person’s prior consent, or, in the case of a minor, the prior consent of his parent or legal guardian, shall be liable for any damages sustained by the person or persons injured as a result thereof."

@kegill In most (30/50) US states, that *is* illegal, and has been long before AI was ever a thing.

Would be nice to have a national law, though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_rights#United_States