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Over the past year-and-a-half, artificial intelligence has been enjoying its mainstream breakthrough.

The instant success of ChatGPT and other AI-based tools and services kick-started what many believe is a new revolution.

By now it is clear that AI offers endless possibilities. While there’s no shortage of new avenues to pursue, most applications rely on input or work from users. That’s fine for the tech-savvy, but some prefer instant results.

For example, we have experimented with various AI-powered image-generation tools to create stock images to complement our news articles. While these all work to some degree, it can be quite a challenge to get a good output; not to mention that it costs time and money too.

StockCake

But what if someone created a stock photo website pre-populated with over a million high-quality royalty-free images? And what if we could freely use the photos from that site because they’re all in the public domain? That would be great.

Enter: StockCake …

StockCake is a new platform by AI startup Imaginary Machines. The site currently hosts more than a million pre-generated images. These images can be downloaded, used, and shared for free. There are no strings attached as all photos are in the public domain.

A service like this isn’t of much use to people who aim to generate completely custom images or photos. All content is pre-made and there is no option to alter the prompts. Instead, the site is aimed at people who want instant stock images for their websites, social media, or any other type of presentation.

Using AI to Democratize Media

TorrentFreak spoke with StockCake founder Nen Fard to find out what motivated him to start this project and how he plans to develop it going forward. He told us that it’s long been a dream to share media freely online with anyone who needs it.

“My journey towards leveraging AI for media content began with a keen interest in the field’s rapid advancements. The defining moment came when I observed a significant leap in the quality of AI-generated content, reaching a standard that was not just acceptable but impressive.

“This realization was pivotal, sparking the transition from ideation to action. It underscored the feasibility of using AI to fulfill a long-held dream of democratizing media content, leading to the birth of StockCake,” Fard adds.

The careful reader will pick up that Fard’s responses were partly edited using AI technology. However, the message is clear, Fard saw the potential to create a vast library of stock photos and added these to the public domain, free to the public at large. And it didn’t stop there.

StockTune

Shortly after releasing StockCake, Fard went live with another public domain project; StockTune . This platform is pretty much identical but focuses on audio instead. The tracks that are listed can be used free of charge and without attribution.

It’s not hard to see how these two sites can replace the basic use of commercial stock footage platforms. While they are still in their infancy, the sites already offer quite a decent quality selection. At the same time, there are also various AI filters in place to ensure that inappropriate content is minimized.

The AI technology, which is in part based on OpenAI and Stability AI, also aims to ensure that the underlying models are legitimate. While there are always legal issues that can pop up, both services strive to play fair, so they can continue to grow, perhaps indefinitely.

Ever-Expanding Libraries

At the time of writing, StockCake has a little over a million photos hosted on the site, while there are nearly 100,000 tracks on StockTune. This is just the beginning, though, as AI generates new versions every minute, then adds them to the site if the quality is on par.

Theoretically, there’s no limit to the number of variations that can be created. While quality is leading, the founder’s vision has always been to create unrestricted access to media. This means that the libraries are ever-expanding.

“The inception of StockCake and StockTune was driven by a vision to revolutionize the accessibility of media content. Unlike traditional platforms, we leverage the limitless potential of AI to create an ever-expanding, diverse set of photos and songs,” Fard says.

Both stock media sites have something suitable for most general topics. However, you won’t find very specific combinations, such as a “ squirrel playing football. ” AI-rendered versions of some people, Donald Trump , for example, appear to be off limits too.

Monetizing the Public Domain?

While the above all sounds very promising, the sites are likely to face plenty of challenges. The platforms are currently not monetized but the AI technology and hosting obviously cost money, so this will have to change.

Fard tells us that he plans to keep access to the photos and audio completely free. However, he’s considering options to generate revenue. Advertising would be one option, but more advanced subscription-based services are too. Or to put it in his AI-amplified words;

“As our platforms continue to grow and evolve, they will naturally give rise to opportunities that support our sustainability without compromising our values. We aim to foster a community where creativity is unrestrained by financial barriers, and every advancement brings us closer to this goal,” Fard says.

For example, the developer plans to launch a suite of AI-powered tools for expert users, to personalize and upscale images when needed. That could be part of a paid service. However, existing footage will remain in the public domain, without charge, he promises.

“Looking ahead, we plan to introduce a suite of AI-powered tools that promise to enhance the creative possibilities for our users significantly. These include upscaling tools for generating higher-resolution photos, style transfer tools that can adapt content to specific artistic aesthetics, and character/object replacement tools for personalized customization.”

The C Word

It’s remarkable that a small startup can create this vast amount of stock footage and share it freely. This may also spook some of the incumbents, who make millions of dollars from their stock photo platforms. While these can’t stop AI technology, they can complain. And they do.

For example, last year, Getty Images sued Stability AI, alleging that it used its stock photos to train its models. This lawsuit remains ongoing. While Fard doesn’t anticipate any legal trouble, he has some thoughts on the copyright implications.

“At Imagination Machines, the driving force behind StockCake and StockTune, we believe that the essence of creativity and innovation should be accessible to all. This belief guides our approach to AI-generated media, which, by its nature, challenges traditional notions of copyright,” Fard says.

The site’s developer trusts that the company’s AI partners respect existing copyright law. And by putting all creations in the public domain, the company itself claims no copyrights.

“Currently, AI-generated content resides in a unique position within copyright laws. These laws were crafted in a different era, focusing on human authorship as the cornerstone of copyright eligibility. However, the remarkable capabilities of AI to generate original, high-quality photos and music without direct human authorship put us at the edge of a new frontier.

“We operate under the current legal framework, which does not extend copyright protection to works created without human ingenuity, allowing us to offer this content in the public domain.”

Both StockCake and StockTune have the potential to be disruptors, but Fard wants to play fair and remain within the boundaries of the law. He also understands that the law may change in the future, and plans to have his voice heard in that debate.

“Our goal is not just to navigate the current legal issues but also to actively advocate for laws that recognize the potential of AI to democratize access to creative content while respecting the rights and contributions of human creators,” Fard concludes.

With AI legal battles and copyright policy revving up globally, there’s certainly plenty of opportunity to advocate.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In his 1962 book, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible , science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke noted that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

At the dawn of the 80s, when computers thrived on a single kilobyte of RAM, any enthusiast with access to Clarke’s book would’ve read his words, gazed at the 1,024 bytes of available RAM, and envisioned a galaxy of opportunity. As expectations have grown year-on-year, mainstream users of technology today are much less easily impressed, and fewer still experience magic.

Yet, there are solid grounds for even the most experienced technologists to reevaluate almost everything based on current AI innovation. Released on Wednesday, the astonishing Udio produces music from written prompts and seamlessly integrates user-supplied lyrics, regardless of how personal, frivolous, or unsuitable for work they are.

Udio and other platforms dedicated to generative AI are the kind of magic that can’t be undermined by looking up a sleeve or spotting a twin in the audience. Indeed, the complexities under the hood that generate the magic are impenetrable for the layman.

One thing is certain, however; Udio didn’t simply boot itself up one day and say, “I know Kung Fu (Fighting by Carl Douglas).” It was continuously fed existing content from unspecified sources before singing (or rapping) a single note. If a new bill introduced at the U.S. House of Representatives gains traction, Udio’s makers will have to declare every single song Udio was trained on, retrospectively.

The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act

Introduced by Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) this week, the bill envisions “groundbreaking legislation” that would compel companies to be completely transparent when training their generative AI models on copyrighted content. From Sciff’s website:

The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act would require a notice to be submitted to the Register of Copyrights prior to the release of a new generative AI system with regard to all copyrighted works used in building or altering the training dataset for that system. The bill’s requirements would also apply retroactively to previously released generative AI systems.

“AI has the disruptive potential of changing our economy, our political system, and our day-to-day lives. We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for ethical guidelines and protections,” Rep. Schiff explains.

“My Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act is a pivotal step in this direction. It champions innovation while safeguarding the rights and contributions of creators, ensuring they are aware when their work contributes to AI training datasets. This is about respecting creativity in the age of AI and marrying technological progress with fairness.”

The bill has huge support; the RIAA says that “comprehensive and transparent recordkeeping” are the “fundamental building blocks” of effective enforcement of creators’ rights, a stance echoed by ASCAP and, in broad terms, all groups listed at the end of this article.

Since the Directors Guild of America says it “commends this commonsense legislation,” a common sense perspective on the proposals shall be applied here.

Artists & Creators Deserve to Get Paid. Period

There can be no debate: the removal of existing art from the generative AI equation is impossible. The latter simply cannot exist without the former; the big legal debate seems to hang on whether consumption was protected under the doctrine of fair use, or was straightforward copyright infringement.

If the court finds in favor of fair use, it seems likely that no copyright holders will receive compensation. A finding in the other direction is likely to lead to copyright holders getting paid in some way, shape, or form.

Yet while the architects of the Bill claim that it “champions innovation while safeguarding the rights and contributions of creators,” the only realistic beneficiaries longer-term will be copyright holders with a significant enough profile to be identified for subsequent reporting.

In most developed countries, copyrights automatically apply as soon as creative works are created. This means there could easily be a billion creators with valid, albeit unregistered copyrights, in tens of billions of images, photos, videos, and music tracks, available online today.

The Bill claims to act on behalf of creators but in reality can only ever benefit an identifiable subset, with registered copyrights, for the purposes of “effective enforcement of creators’ rights,” according to the RIAA.

Join The Big Team or Get Nothing

Much like the proposal to “blow up the internet” in the movie Four Lions, the Bill hasn’t even considered what can and can’t be achieved. A centralized database, of all copyrighted works and their respective owners, doesn’t exist. Even if an AI development team wanted to report that a certain copyright work had been used, how can ownership of that content ever be established?

And then at some point, almost inevitably, content created with elements of other content, permissible under the doctrine of fair use, will be reported as original copyrighted content, when no payment for that use is required under law.

This leads to a number of conclusions, all based on how rights are currently managed. At least initially, if compelled to identify all copyright works used to the Copyright Office, that will only be useful to the subset of creators mentioned earlier.

In the long-term, smaller creators – who feel that they too deserve to get paid – will probably have to join the future equivalent of a Content ID program for AI. Run by those with the power to put such a system in place, these entities have a reputation of making the rules and keeping most of the money.

The bottom line is extremely straightforward: if creators should be rewarded for their work, then all creators should be rewarded for their work. There cannot be discriminatory rules that value one copyright holder’s rights over those of another. More fundamentally, don’t propose legislation without considering the burden of future compliance, and then double up with exponential difficulties associated with retroactive compliance, as the Bill lays out.

It’s a Kind of Magic, But Not Actually Magic

AI may achieve magical things, but it is not actually magic. The Bill requires AI companies, entities, to provide a “ sufficiently detailed summary of any copyrighted works used in the training dataset ” to the Register of Copyrights, not later than 30 days before the generative AI system is made available to the public. Or, read differently, enough time to prevent release with an injunction.

On the basis that this task simply cannot be achieved for all copyright holders, right across the board, the proposal fails. A ChatGPT instance didn’t reject the Bill or its proposals outright when given the details by us today. However, considering its dataset, and allowing a handling time of one second for each copyright work to be identified in theory , could take over 31 years to complete.

“This crazy number highlights the immense scale and complexity of the task. It emphasizes the need for innovative solutions, automation, and cooperation among stakeholders to navigate the challenges of copyright in the AI era,” one of the reasons for the debate concludes.

The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act can be found here ( pdf )

The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act is supported by the Recording Industry Association of America, Copyright Clearance Center, Directors Guild of America, Authors Guild, National Association of Voice Actors, Concept Art Association, Professional Photographers of America, Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Writers Guild of America West, Writers Guild of America East, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, American Society for Collective Rights Licensing, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Society of Composers and Lyricists, National Music Publishers Association, Recording Academy, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Songwriters of North America, Black Music Action Coalition, Music Artist Coalition, Human Artistry Campaign, and the American Association of Independent Music.

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From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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Starting last year, various rightsholders have filed lawsuits against companies that develop AI models.

The list of complainants includes record labels, book authors, visual artists, and even the New York Times. These rightsholders all object to the presumed use of their work to train AI models without proper compensation.

The New York Times lawsuit targets OpenAI and Microsoft , who have both filed separate motions to dismiss this month. Microsoft’s response included a few paragraphs equating the recent AI fears to the doom and gloom scenarios that were painted by Hollywood when the VCR became popular in the 1980s.

VCR Doom and Gloom

The motion to dismiss cited early VCR scaremongering, including that of the late MPAA boss Jack Valenti, who warned of the potentially devastating consequences this novel technology could have on the movie industry.

This comparison triggered a reply from The Times, which clarified that generative AI is nothing like the VCR. It’s an entirely different technology with completely separate copyright concerns, the publication wrote . At the same time, the company labeled Microsoft’s other defenses, including fair use, as premature.

Before the New York court rules on the matter, Microsoft took the opportunity to respond once more. According to the tech giant, The Times took its VCR comparison too literally.

“Microsoft’s point was not that VCRs and LLMs are the same. It was that content creators have tried before to smother the democratizing power of new technology based on little more than doom foretold. The challenges failed, yet the doom never came.

“And that is why plaintiffs must offer more than imagined fears before the law will block innovation. That The Times can only think to dodge this point is telling indeed,” Microsoft added.

‘No Copyright Infringements Cited’

For the court, it is irrelevant whether the VCR comparisons make sense or not; the comparison is just lawsuit padding. What matters is whether The Times has pleaded copyright infringement and DMCA claims against Microsoft, sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

The Times argued that its claims are valid; the company asked the court to move the case forward, so it can conduct discovery and further back up its claims. However, Microsoft believes the legal dispute should end here, as no concrete copyright infringements have been cited.

“Having failed to plausibly plead its claims, The Times mostly just pleads for discovery. But the defects in its Complaint are too fundamental to brush aside. The Times is not entitled to proceed on contributory infringement claims without alleging a single instance of end-user infringement of its works,” Microsoft notes.

More Shortcomings

Similar shortcomings also apply to the other claims up for dismissal, including the alleged DMCA violation, which according to Microsoft lacks concrete evidence.

As highlighted previously, The Times did reference a Gizmodo article that suggested ChatGPT’s ‘Browse with Bing’ was used by people to bypass paywalls. However, Microsoft doesn’t see this as concrete evidence.

“This is like alleging that ‘some online articles report infringement happens on Facebook’. That does not support a claim. The Times cannot save a Complaint that identifies no instance of infringement by pointing to a secondary source that identifies no instance of infringement.”

Similarly, allegations that The Times’ ChatGPT prompts returned passages of New York Times articles isn’t sufficient either, as that’s not “third-party” copyright infringement.

“The Times is talking about its own prompts that allegedly “generated … outputs … that … violate The Times’s copyrights.’ An author cannot infringe its own works,” Microsoft notes.

Microsoft would like the court to grant its motion to dismiss, while The Times is eager to move forward. It’s now up to the court to decide if the case can progress, and if so, on what claims.

Alternatively, the parties can choose to settle their disagreements outside of court but, thus far, there’s no evidence to suggest that they’re actively trying to resolve their disagreements.

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A copy of Microsoft’s reply memorandum in support of its partial motion to dismiss, submitted at a New York federal court, can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

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