If you need to use AI, be aware that there are MANY free models and training options. No reason to be locked into proprietary service.
this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2025
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What is this article even talking about? It’s making no sense.
They're trying to make some type of argument that a private studio should have exclusive rights to a specific style of art and that by openai allowing users to generate art in that style, we are slipping into anti-democratic authoritarianism.
My opinion is that you can't own "styles" of art and that there's nothing wrong here. Legally speaking I can copy any art style I want.
Thanks for that explainer. I thought the verbiage in the article was a little over the top.
However there is a point at which the "style" of the art is the thing that is copyrightable, sort of by implication.
The standard for proving a copyright violation where a defendant claims a transformative use or a derivative work is "substantial similar."
For as long as I can remember that includes the overall presentation of the work, and it's hard to describe that as anything other than a "style."
The article draws a comparison that allowing copyright protection for styles would be like allowing copyrights for entire genres. I don't think that's right. Nobody could copyright all "landscape paintings" as a genre, but look at landscape works by Katsushika Hokusai, and that style, to me, is creative enough to warrant protection, if it were made originally in America today and not already in the public domain. And he didn't invent woodblock prints or even woodblock prints of landscapes, but the way he did it is so unique as to be insperable from the copyrighted work itself and arguably deserving of protection simply for its advancement of the art.
If you made a woodblock print in the same style but used it to portray a scene typical in anime, rather than a landscape, that's clearly transformative and derivative, but not substantially similar. If you use the style to make prints of waves breaking around Mt. Fuji, that's substantially similar. So like, as to dude's anime style, if you use the same style to make landscapes, certainly that's not infringing, as it's not substantially similar.
I also don't see the threatening outcome the author suggests as worrisome. There are still exceptions for blatant copying that apply, mainly parody and fair use.
As you have described the situation my question is if it would be similar to copyright Donald duck, despite not having drawn all possible poses and situations?
That's already the case. There would be two copyrights for a cartoon for Donald duck, and possibly, in fact likely, many others.
A copyright is essentially a right of enforcement. You don't have to register anything or file anything in order to gain that right. It's a right to sue someone to enjoin further use and potentially to recoup money damages if you can prove loss.
The standard for whether something is copyrightable at the outset is whether it is the product of a modicum of creativity, and reduced to a tangible medium of expression.
So far one cartoon of Donald duck, each drawn frame of the show would have its own copyright. Also, the character would have a copyright. The dialogue of the script would have another copyright. And the test for whether a particular character is something that can be copyrighted is to ask whether the character is separable from the overall work and whether the character is "well delineated."
Donald duck is certainly the product of creativity, it is reduced to a tangible medium of expression when it is drawn on paper, and it is the main character of the show and has its own personality and behavior. So it is pretty clearly of deserving protection. Although at this point in time, I believe some of Disney's earliest characters are now in the public domain, Even Mickey mouse, which people like my IP professor in law school said was never going to happen. This is because I believe in 1984 there was a law called the copyright act of 1984 but was colloquial referred to as the Mickey mouse copyright act. It was championed by Sonny Bono, who I believe was friends with Walt Disney personally, and which many said had the sole purpose of extending Mickey mouse's copyright for another 25 years or whatever it was. My memory is a little fuzzy on this. My professor figured that Disney was such a powerful institution that anytime Mickey mouse was about to fall into the public domain, Congress would stop it.
A doctrine sort of related to your question is called scen a faire. It is a French phrase which I have no doubt spelled wrong because I am on mobile. It means that elements essential to a scene of the kind which would be common to all scenes of that type, are not copyrightable. So this would include some background characters such as those that, despite being drawn in a creative way, are more so the product of the scene itself rather than any creativity. For example, if there is a scene in a cartoon where the character gets onto a train and hands the ticket to a ticket taker, the ticker taker character is probably not copyrightable.
Yeah they want corporations to own styles so the rich can be more powerful, the rich push this sort of propaganda out endlessly
This is just like china, copying stuff, or rather called steeling. the original companies need to build their brand and style for decades and spend 100s of millions to improving to perfection. then we have AI just copying it in matter of minutes.
and you think 1 person should be able to steel all this work and legacy from 1000s of employees because its "protecting the rich"?
first let's get something out of the way
the actual way that copyright works is that a few giant megacorps buy up everything and they end up owning copyrights to the vast majority of recognizable content.
so for example in 2019 over half of the movies released in theaters was owned by Disney. The same company that unilaterally has the ability to change US federal law when convenient for them.
studio ghibli is no different- they're a subsidiary of Nippon Television which has a $2B+ annual revenue
so keep in mind when you advocate here for stronger copyright protections, you are essentially saying that the biggest companies in the world deserve more money.
2nd- the "style" is not copyrightable. anybody can mimic the style. and guess what? if I make a cartoon and I make it look like studio ghibli style.. people are still gonna recognize it as "studio ghibli" style. they are basically getting free marketing. they are not losing out here.
Anyone who doubles down this hard to defend AI art theft machines fucking hates human artists, who are a branch of intellectuals. Nazis are known to openly hate, abuse the rights of and mistreat intellectuals. Fuck kava.
You may or may not be correct in hating me but do not let my comments bring down the good name of kava
As for "doubling down so hard" I'd flip the message and ask you why you are simping for mega corps? simping for mega corps is about as fascist as you can get- a populist ideology idolizing elites
An AI is not doing anything a human wouldn't do. You look at a bunch of content. You learn from it and incorporate it in new synthesis.
It's not fundamentally different. So unless you can make a meaningful statement (beyond mild personal attacks) that illustrates the difference between the two, you will convince no-one
I’m not entirely sure what this style even is - wouldn’t this same argument apply to Apple’s “Memoji” that has been out a few years?
So glad people finally waking up to these things being power plays.
Republicans, Evangelical Christians, and now Techbros are all running on the same script which boils down to "rules for thee, not for me."
Being a hypocrite is simply showing others you have the power to be a hypocrite and all they can do is get mad and stomp their feet. It's why the right wing loves to "trigger liberals." It's not even about actual politics or religion anymore, it's just simply "might makes right."
These are expressions of power, plain and simple. They should always be viewed as such.
I mean, so many companies pirated tons of materials to train their LLMs and they are making way more money than the guys at the Pirate Bay ever did. It's almost like because the guys at the Pirate Bay were making small potatoes money that they were worth going after. It's almost like if you crime big enough, the world will just pat you on the back and say "good job" instead.
Meta was literally caught downloading Anna's Archive and the widely used by nearly every AI company books3 corpus was everything from private torrent tracker Bibliotik. Why do they get different treatment? They are leveraging the same pirated works to make money, which was the whole argument for throwing the Pirate Bay admins behind bars for laws that didn't actually exist in their home country, that they were profiting from piracy. The LLM companies just are making way more money so it's let go for some reason.
It's a power play, to show little people can't get away with it, but if you've got millions in venture capital at your back, you can do whatever the fuck you want and people will praise you for it.
We're living through the return of the robber barons. This time, however, they can implant their thoughts directly into every single person's hands at any instant. That's why your point is the most salient, most important, and most downplayed
I agree on the double standard. I also think there's an element of Cory Doctorow's point that "it's not a crime of we do it with an app."
Running an unlicensed taxi service or hotel business? No no we're not criminals, we're disrupting stagnant markets!
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/potatotrac/
It's basically a blanket pass for tech bros to bend and break laws
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OpenAI picked Studio Ghibli because Miyazaki hates their approach.
I highly doubt it. They picked it because the Ghibli style is very popular among users. There’s also no reason to believe that it violates “democratic values”. Since it’s popular, the general population is voting that they LIKE it, not that they oppose it.
Downvote me all you like, but this is trying to put a lot of malice where the simpler explanation is just “money”.
Yeah it's not like this is the only way to generate the style, it's relatively simple to even do it locally. It's just popular
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That linked X post from the White House at the end leaves me speechless.
Utterly inhumane
We as the people of the united States have to do something. If you aren't part of a movement yet join one, anyone, most of them are communicating with each other at this point.
What kind of article is this? They misattributed a quote, then admitted the misattributed the quote, then doubled down on it, and then threw in a political message.
People, this is rage bait. It's yellow journalism. Don't fall for this shit.
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Will you guys shut up about this?
There are genuinely some big issues with AI that need to be addressed but they are drowned out by morons melting down over people making dumb little Ghibli style images for their own amusement.
Shout about insurance companies using AI to auto dent people's medical claims, not about some dude Turnjng a picture of his cat into anime style
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I say this as someone who frequently uses generative ai, and actively chooses to pay for the service.
Fuck openai.
This company has utterly failed to fulfill their mission statement, and they will be unable to make right by humanity until ALL software they have created is available to the public as FOSS (free and open source software). Openai claimed that this is exactly what they were going to do, and then they just didn't. So fuckem.
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There is nothing ethic about the OpenAi, they stole books, videos, music and art. Their whole business is based on robbery. Its fucking shame that not only microsoft, but also apple is using their tech in their operating systems. Fucking shame.
There is another aspect of this also. I could generate Ghibli style images a few years ago using better image generation models like stable diffusion or Midjourney. OpenAI is so lagging behind in terms of image generation it is comical at this point. But they get all the media coverage for these things as if they are inventing something out of thin air.
Most governments ignored the IP issues when other models were already doing these violations. Professionals are not using OpenAI. OpenAI only makes it so that these products reach big audiences. Then they become extremely accessible with the downside being that they are dumbed down. Thus, losing a lot of functionality.
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