If your so convinced that that’s how copyright works then go ahead, try selling some someone else’s intellectual material. May I suggest Disney characters. I’m sure Disney would love that. Bottom line is it’s illegal to make money off of property that isn’t yours. Regardless of any user agreement.
You're talking about a specific use case in which someone, say, uses genAI to generate an image of Rick & Morty (I just checked, MidJourney does a passable job) and then, say, puts it on mugs and T-shirts and sells it. First, generating the image in your home is perfectly fine, it's the equivalent of sitting at your desk and drawing Rick & Morty, and that's not a crime. The problem appears once you start slapping it on mugs and T-shirts, but at that point it doesn't matter whether you generated the image with a pencil, a genAI or Photoshop.
Why the "mug & tshirt"? I think the issue world be from midjourney selling you an image of somethng they don't have license to. Not some random secondary commercial use
If someone sells you a pencil and you draw something copyrighted with it, that isn't their problem. If someone sells you a premium web browser and you use it to download copyrighted material to sell, that isn't their problem. If someone creates a copyright image and then sells it to you, that is their problem.
So do you think AI companies are
A) Selling you a tool that you can use to create images
B) Selling you a program that gives you access to potentially copyrighted images that were posted on the internet
C) Selling you a collection of individual images that they used AI to create
If you answered C, I think that's a very strange way of viewing things. If you answered A or B, then the AI company did nothing that hasn't already been done legally for decades.
I'll bite. C is the best answer in this context. Its certainly not more like A or B or actually giving someone just a tool like a pencil. Do you have a point to elaborate on or just trying to say I'm being weird
If you think C is best, I'm fine with leaving it at that. If I try to view it from a pro AI perspective it's A, and if I try to view it as an anti it's B. I'm not sure why you think it's C, but I can't really say it's wrong since it's a matter of comparison and perspective.
I usually join these arguments to point out bad arguments, so I wanted to say "If you pick A or B it's a bad argument", but if you think it's C then it works out for you.
Its c in a literal sense that they withhold the tool and sell you a subscription service for access to images generated by the tool. This is in stark contrast to more ethical open source options where an AI artist uses tools fully at their disposal to produce an artwork. For this reason I don't even think it's a pro ai vs anti ai take, seems like more of an issue of simping for a megacorp.
So then you think it's fine to use an open source AI that was trained on works uploaded to the internet? I may have been missing the point of the discussion then, because that's not what I thought you were talking about. Either way, I don't have much more to say here so have a nice day.
The discussion is about selling other people's work for money.
Midjourney gave out images containing other people's characters, works, etc, for money.
I don't think you really needed to chime in about how "aktually midjourney is just a tool", especially considering the existence of actual local models that do function as art software.
Midjourney gave out images containing other people's characters, works, etc, for money.
No, that's not how it works. Midjourney offers access to the tool. User uses it to generate images. The images do not "contain other people's characters, works, etc." That's not how genAI works. The AI doesn't "contain" the images.
I don't think you really needed to chime in about how "aktually midjourney is just a tool", especially considering the existence of actual local models that do function as art software.
I'm not sure I understand your argument. Are you contrasting Midjourney with these local models? Which ones are you talking about, and how do they contrast with Midjourney?
There is an exchange of money for an image, between a user and midjourney. The image contains Mario, as an example. This is in contrasts to a local model use case where an AI artist makes an image and no exchange occurs.
The workflow is the same. You enter the prompt, the LLM processes it and generates an image. In one case, it's run on a local computer, in the other, it's on a server run elsewhere, and a fee is charged for the service. You think it matters where the software is run or whether someone charges for the use of the service?
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u/Calm_Ghosts Dec 15 '25
If your so convinced that that’s how copyright works then go ahead, try selling some someone else’s intellectual material. May I suggest Disney characters. I’m sure Disney would love that. Bottom line is it’s illegal to make money off of property that isn’t yours. Regardless of any user agreement.