• bloomingkales 4 hours ago

    I’m not really exposed to children’s drawings, but these look particularly talented.

    I always feel a little weird about generating AI art because it really is standing on the shoulders of giants. I’d say it’s the closest thing to when Napster got everyone used to theft.

    Any little simple drawing you generate is really off the back of kids and teenagers that draw out of a passion. So I try not to do it, feels icky.

    Ideally we want a world where we license the artist’s style, and hopefully they can get paid out like streaming music artists in the long term. Along with that, we need laws that let you sue people that copy the style with no license.

    • sebzim4500 2 hours ago

      >I’d say it’s the closest thing to when Napster got everyone used to theft.

      I think the defining feature of theft is that you deprive the victim of their property. Redefining theft to include copying just feels silly, it's fundamentally a different sin (if it's a sin at all).

      • nuc1e0n 23 minutes ago

        Well it hasn't been long since Disney got everyone used to suing each other for making similar drawings either. Which is odd because Mickey wasn't the first mouse drawn with round ears at the time of his first cartoon. A whole Simpsons episode satirised the affair.

      • WalterBright an hour ago

        > Ideally we want a world where we license the artist’s style, and hopefully they can get paid out like streaming music artists in the long term. Along with that, we need laws that let you sue people that copy the style with no license.

        Years ago, I just kind of assumed that should be true. I'm not so sure anymore. I don't see any evidence that creativity comes from copyright and patent protection. Germany flowered in the 19th century without them.

        For the last 20 years, I've been releasing my work under the Boost license which is the most permissible license out there (public domain is my preference, but it is not recognized in some countries).

        • ses1984 4 hours ago

          Napster got people used to piracy not theft.

          Tape recording was already huge before Napster and it’s also considered piracy.

          • bloomingkales 4 hours ago

            Class Piracy extends Theft.

            It’s just an abstraction. I don’t want to go down this rabbit hole though.

            • ses1984 2 hours ago

              If we’re going by the age of sail definition then yeah.

              Is recording a song freely broadcast over the air considered piracy or theft? Courts said no.

              Is recording video (even premium cable) on your dvr considered piracy or theft? Courts said no.

              Is giving a mixtape to your friend considered piracy or theft? Actually I’m not sure…

              • geon 3 hours ago

                Nonsense. Theft by definition requires the original owner to lose something. Me not buying something is not theft.

                • Retric 3 hours ago

                  Depriving them the opportunity to make a sale is still depriving them of something.

                  • saulpw 2 hours ago

                    What if they're not selling it anymore?

            • WalterBright an hour ago

              Copyright is a very recent invention, since 1790. Ownership of property goes back long before recorded history.

              • yapyap 4 hours ago

                > I’d say it’s the closest thing to when Napster got everyone used to theft

                that’s a bit dramatic, I’d argue the way AI has been used, I.E. scraping up people’s work without consent and then using it to train models that will recreate said work to the best of their abilities so you won’t even need the artist anymore (in the ideal vision of the people running AI companies) is a much more heinous thing.

                You’re downloading and using the artist’s work without their consent to train a tool to replace them. Whereas Napster is downloading their work and you might buy their work in the future cause you love it so much.

                • bloomingkales 4 hours ago

                  For the training part. Generating art off someone’s art is nuanced. Let’s say you generate art off Darwin’s kid’s art.

                  - First off most people won’t ever know, so you don’t even have to hide the theft.

                  - If you copied a well known style, then you would have to hide that you did so by layering another style on top

                  - You don’t have to worry about the first two points if you are not stealing and just commission an artist.

                  - Or you are oblivious and uncaring about all of this, and all is sound in your mind because you bought the fake gem currency fair and square to generate your image.

                  So, we are talking about taking. Some people have issue with the word stealing.

              • Aeolun 8 hours ago

                I don’t really care whose they are. I just love seeing any of these drawings.

                I have to imagine that drawing was a much greater source of entertainment at the time, and I’m kind of sad that that isn’t the case any more.

                • Terr_ 8 hours ago

                  You might also enjoy the preserved stick-figure art of a 13th-century kid:

                  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

                  • WalterBright an hour ago

                    They're also surprisingly good drawings. I drew nothing like them as a kid.

                    • lm28469 26 minutes ago

                      And given the current war against boredom it's not going to get better.

                    • drzaiusx11 4 hours ago

                      My kids draw constantly (including on things they shouldn't), but I also limit screen time so that may have something to do with it

                      • warner25 2 hours ago

                        Yeah, starting around age four, all of my kids became prolific artists, going through dozens of sheets of paper per day. With our oldest kid, we tried hanging them up on the wall, but it quickly ended up covering every inch of a long hallway. Now, to keep our house from overflowing, I just photograph[1] all the drawings every night and recycle them (see my other comment about personally using the back sides of some for my own notes).

                        [1] After four kids, I've fallen behind on sorting through the photos, but we have albums for the artwork that each of them has made. It's pretty cool to see it all in one place, and how their work has become more sophisticated over time.

                    • dennis_jeeves2 an hour ago

                      >“Children are one’s greatest happiness,” he once wrote, “but often & often a still greater misery. A man of science ought to have none.”

                      Brats..

                      • warner25 2 hours ago

                        My kids just freely grab sheets of printer paper when they want to draw stuff. To save paper, I later use the other sides of their drawings for any handwritten notes or conceptual sketches that I make. I guess people will be really amused if I ever become a historical figure and they see these.

                        • jesprenj 2 hours ago

                          > Error 405 Slovenian users must use proxy. > Slovenian users must use proxy.

                          > Guru Meditation: > XID: 66443665

                          > Varnish cache server

                          interesting ...

                          • bag_boy 6 hours ago

                            Ah, how nice is this?

                            We’re no longer in the “they’re being auctioned off as NFTs soon” phase of digitized historical documents.

                            • wslh 2 hours ago

                              It is like moving to the past in a time machine where you see the importance of horses as transport. Also connected to the Onfim's drawings [1]. Horses as a technology most probably will surpass cars in the way we know them now.

                              [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onfim

                              • avian 3 hours ago

                                All I get is "Error 405 [country] users must use proxy."

                                I wonder what that's about. GDPR?

                                • latexr an hour ago

                                  > GDPR?

                                  Unlikely. I’m in the EU and can access the website just fine.

                                  • welferkj 2 hours ago

                                    "We are currently unable to steal your data, please check back later."

                                  • dennis_jeeves2 an hour ago

                                    >The Darwin kids “were used as volunteers,” says Kohn, “to collect butterflies, insects, and moths, and to make observations on plants in the fields around town.”

                                    Back then, I suppose there were no child labor laws. /s