Forum: Author Hangout

how long ago did you try it?

A couple/few weeks ago. I saw the AI generators on a news report and Stable was the free one.

Maybe the free/buy had to do with using it on the web rather than installing it on your computer.

When I read up on it, they are being sued by many companies for copyright violation. I guess they loaded tons of images that they use.

The lawsuits look to be frivolous (but who knows, in today's legal climate?)

The sort of use Stable Diffusion made of source images fits squarely within the general fair use rules, and some analogous uses in other fields have been upheld. However, there's no case law about images to date, and courts will have to contend with people who have absolutely no idea how generative AI works. There's literally not a pixel of any of the source images located within the model, per se. The model knows the 'idea' of what the source images 'look like', and that's all.

In so many ways, this is a fait accompli - the technology to train a model is moving down to the small-team-with-resources arena and will hit the individual-user level soon. All you need is a bunch of labeled images (which the Internet is rife with) and you're off to the races.

There are already websites with thousands of derivative models starting with various Stable Diffusion bases and training in different subsets of images. Better dogs, better cars, models that can generate celebrities, whatever.

We're going to have to figure out how to live with it, because it's not going away.

The same, of course, is true of ChatGPT and the like, which will drastically change how a great deal of writing is done over time.

Get a very good list of negative prompts going.

Troll through civitai and grab a lot of different models. Many of the popular ones are totally crap and you will find yourself unable to replicate the kinds of images shown in their samples. But there are gems in there. You will still need to go through them to find one that gives the style you want:

https://civitai.com/

Then start looking into how to train and mix models so you can evolve out your own style.

Make sure to get 'dynamic prompts' so you can do wildcards in your promps:

https://github.com/adieyal/sd-dynamic-prompts

Ultimate Upscale also helps a lot:

https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/discussions/6622?sort=top

You will need to adjust some settings so it uses your GPU right.

Set your upscaler in settings to 4x_foolhardy:

https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/stable-diffusion-x4-upscaler

get a good SD VAE:

https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/sd-vae-ft-mse-original/tree/main

I don't know why but people keep saying to set 'Eta noise seed delta' to 31337

The file 'webui-user.bat' ...

Make sure it has your python path, and this:

@echo off

set PYTHON="[...]Python/Python37/python.exe"

set GIT=

set VENV_DIR=

set COMMANDLINE_ARGS=--medvram --opt-split-attention --enable-insecure-extension-access --xformers

set 'PYTORCH_CUDA_ALLOC_CONF=max_split_size_mb:4096'

call webui.bat

The number 4096 - that's key. That number needs to be as high as you can get it, based on how many GB's your GPU has, but not to the limit of your GPU. If it's too low, or if you don't set it, the app will crash claiming it can't allocate memory even when it's only trying to allocate a fraction of what you have.

The commandline args... if you get errors telling to try a command line, that's where they go.

Here's the list of SD command line args:

https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui/wiki/Command-Line-Arguments-and-Settings

For me the important one was:
--medvram
That slowed down stable diffusion, but also made it allocate memory properly, stopping crashes I was having on larger images.

If I went and took a snapshop of the Mona Lisa then sold it - who's art is that?

I bought an original oil painting from an artist. I was thinking of using it as a book cover. After all, I bought it.

But, no. I may have bought the painting, but its copyright is still with the artist.

But, no. I may have bought the painting, but its copyright is still with the artist.

That seems counter-intuitive to me. The artist sold you the original.

AJ

The artist sold you the original.

But not the right to use it commercially.

The artist can make a giclee of it and I can't even though I own it.

The artist can make a giclee of it and I can't even though I own it.

How can the artist make a giclee of it after they've sold the original to you? I think for paintings and similar, it would be more intuitive for copyright to accompany ownership of the original, unless there's an agreement for it to be specifically excluded.

AJ

How can the artist make a giclee of it after they've sold the original to you?

Because they photographed it before they sold it. They make the giclee from the digital photograph.

And I have one original painting where the artist forgot to photograph it. I was in his gallery looking at a book he was selling of photographs of his paintings. I noticed mine wasn't in there and asked why and that's when he told me he hadn't photographed it. I ended up loaning him the original for him to photograph. He allowed me to choose any giclee from his gallery as a thank you (I guess payment for allowing me to let him photograph it).

Do you think that buying a book at a book store gives you the right to reproduce it and sell copies?

No, because you're not buying the original work.

If no, why would you think a painting should be different?

Because you are buying the original work.

I'm not sure what the law says, but if you buy a photograph, I wouldn't expect you to be able to copy it by default unless you also bought the negative.

AJ

Buying "the original work" does not mean you are automatically buying the copyright as well.

Intuitively I think it should.

AJ

I understand the difference between what the government has decreed and what seems intuitively right.

AJ

There is no intuitively anything with copyright.

It seems to be over-simplistic for you to be unable to imagine better copyright laws.

AJ

That you can imagine different copyright laws that you think would be better in no way makes what you think would be better more "intuitive" than the existing copyright law.

Actually it does. All it requires is the application of logic to the copyright laws then others to agree with me.

AJ

Intuition, logic and law are three very different beasts, only idiots harness all three to the same chariot.

I'm not suggesting you are an idiot AJ, nor is my intent to demean your intuition. I'm just not alone in fearing a meeting with your unfettered imagination…

Hey, I don't mind being called an idiot!

We're surely doomed if there's no place for people who try to think of better ways of doing things. But the Gods would prefer people to try then smack them over the head with the laws of Unintended Consequences to remind them of their station in life ;-)

AJ

Want to talk about (lack of) intuition when it comes to the law?

I wanted to use some words from a song in my novel "Last Kiss." I was going to have the character sing the beginning of the song. I finally tracked down the copyright holder who wasn't the writer of the song. And then I found out that was the copyright for performing the song. Another company held the copyright for the lyrics.

you might sell the film rights for your best selling novel, but retain all other rights, such as audiobook

I used to chat on wattpad with a successful author, Michael J. Sullivan. He was being published by one of the Big-5. I think it was Hatcher. But when the CEO of that company said authors had to sign over all rights, and Michael didn't want to sign over the audio rights, he left Hatcher and self-published.

What the law says is you get ownership of the physical object and zero rights to the copyright unless you specifically contracted to buy the copyright.

I seem to recall a story about someone who created a unique work of art (a painting?) They then created a non-fungible token from the work, destroyed the original then sold the non-fungible token.

Does a no-longer-existing artwork still have copyright protection?

Can non-fungible tokens be copied?

Did Dubya use the term 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' to describe the French?

AJ

Dayum. I had a vague recollection of Dubya saying it about the French refusing to back the war in Iraq. I found several sites mentioning both the quote and Dubya but nothing explicitly linking the two.

Could the internet have been censored?

AJ

I seem to recall a story about someone who created a unique work of art (a painting?) They then created a non-fungible token from the work, destroyed the original then sold the non-fungible token.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63218704

People don't buy books for the cover art.

I actually used to do just that a lot back when I would go to bookstores and buy fiction. Lacking any knowledge on what I was getting... it was just a handy way to filter things in or out. Did the cover picture something that caught my interest or not.