It's not a good state, though, and the law should change. That it benefits a children's hospital didn't prevent that hospital from trying to stop use of the character in a new work in the US (and failing there).
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Today I Learned #4: Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
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It's not a good state, though, and the law should change. That it benefits a children's hospital didn't prevent that hospital from trying to stop use of the character in a new work in the US (and failing there).
It really seems odd to me, such a specific exception to copyright law being carved out in 1988.
I suppose I should have guessed, but it is confirmed that robots are doing sales and misinformation on linkedin and twitter
Two Stanford researchers have fallen down a LinkedIn rabbit hole, finding over 1,000 fake profiles using AI-generated faces at the bottom.
DiResta was messaged by a profile reported to belong to a "Keenan Ramsey". It looked like a normal software sales pitch at first glance, but upon further investigation, it became apparent that Ramsey was an entirely fictitious person. While the picture appeared to be a standard corporate headshot, it also included multiple red flags that point to it being an AI-generated face like those generated by websites like This Person Does Not Exist. DiResta was specifically tipped off by the alignment of Ramsey's eyes (the dead center of the photo), her earrings (she was only wearing one) and her hair, several bits of which blurred into the background.
This isn't the first time a ring of AI-faced bots have taken to social media. In 2021, multiple accounts ostensibly belonging to Amazon warehouse employees were banned from Twitter, with many of their profile pictures appearing to come from the same type of AI as the latest LinkedIn ones. Amazon denied any link to, or responsibility for, the profiles and their tweets.
The Twitter incident is different and arguably worse: Instead of trying to make a sale in a less-than-forthright manner, Twitter bots from Amazon and other sources typically push misinformation and propaganda, both for corporations and governments.
"It's not a story of mis- or disinfomation, but rather the intersection of a fairly mundane business use case w/AI technology, and resulting questions of ethics & expectations. What are our assumptions when we encounter others on social networks? What actions cross the line to manipulation," DiRestra said on Twitter.
NPR looked into DiRestra and Goldstein's claims and found more than 70 businesses linked to the fake profiles. Several of the businesses said they had hired outside marketers, but expressed surprise when told about the fake LinkedIn profiles. The businesses also denied authorizing the campaigns.
A recent study found that the average person has no better odds than chance at distinguishing a real face from an AI-generated one. Think you can do better? Test yourself at this site.
DiResta was messaged by a profile reported to belong to a "Keenan Ramsey". It looked like a normal software sales pitch at first glance, but upon further investigation, it became apparent that Ramsey was an entirely fictitious person. While the picture appeared to be a standard corporate headshot, it also included multiple red flags that point to it being an AI-generated face like those generated by websites like This Person Does Not Exist. DiResta was specifically tipped off by the alignment of Ramsey's eyes (the dead center of the photo), her earrings (she was only wearing one) and her hair, several bits of which blurred into the background.
This isn't the first time a ring of AI-faced bots have taken to social media. In 2021, multiple accounts ostensibly belonging to Amazon warehouse employees were banned from Twitter, with many of their profile pictures appearing to come from the same type of AI as the latest LinkedIn ones. Amazon denied any link to, or responsibility for, the profiles and their tweets.
The Twitter incident is different and arguably worse: Instead of trying to make a sale in a less-than-forthright manner, Twitter bots from Amazon and other sources typically push misinformation and propaganda, both for corporations and governments.
"It's not a story of mis- or disinfomation, but rather the intersection of a fairly mundane business use case w/AI technology, and resulting questions of ethics & expectations. What are our assumptions when we encounter others on social networks? What actions cross the line to manipulation," DiRestra said on Twitter.
NPR looked into DiRestra and Goldstein's claims and found more than 70 businesses linked to the fake profiles. Several of the businesses said they had hired outside marketers, but expressed surprise when told about the fake LinkedIn profiles. The businesses also denied authorizing the campaigns.
A recent study found that the average person has no better odds than chance at distinguishing a real face from an AI-generated one. Think you can do better? Test yourself at this site.
That is a matter of debate.
As far as I know AI has been so far rejected as being copyright or patent holders, since the holder needs to be a natural entity, but there is at least one exception to this (I can try to find it, if someone's curious).
I don't know why people are trying this though. The AI would be a tool to generate the pictures, in my opinion, so not different than a pen. So the real copyright holder should be the person who made the AI.
So... I'd not make a high-profile project with this, because the legal situation is kinda fluid.
As far as I know AI has been so far rejected as being copyright or patent holders, since the holder needs to be a natural entity, but there is at least one exception to this (I can try to find it, if someone's curious).
I don't know why people are trying this though. The AI would be a tool to generate the pictures, in my opinion, so not different than a pen. So the real copyright holder should be the person who made the AI.
So... I'd not make a high-profile project with this, because the legal situation is kinda fluid.
This is a good question, and I think the answer is no (but could be yes for patents?), as there is no "creative expression".Are AI-generated faces even possible to copyright? (assuming they also factor info from the user's browser).
I was thinking of using some for gfx - lazy is best
I do not think so. They would have copyright for the code that they wrote to make the AI, but the output of that AI would not be a derivative work of that code, so is not owned. I think this is supported by the US Copyright office.
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Assuming that (as they claim) the same face won't be generated twice by the AI, it would be quite hard to prove the image was taken from such a site
Anyway, if I was to use that, I'd alter the images anyway (palette/pixelization etc), since they wouldn't be good for what I want as they are.
Then again, the point (for me) of using AI images for it would be the errors the AI makes (distortions), which in turn may realistically be traced back.
More to the point, they release their code so it would be easy to just run it locally anyway. If you edited the image I am sure you could claim copyright.Assuming that (as they claim) the same face won't be generated twice by the AI, it would be quite hard to prove the image was taken from such a site
Today in our weekly team meeting (large group, about 15-20 people), our fun question was asking what's something on our bucket list. My answer was that I'd like to write a book, so the host (he and I are friendly) says "Oh, maybe you'll be the next JK Rowling?" and I immediately said "We don't say that name" (due to her controversies)
Well so my TIL is that Rowling has basically become her own villain ... She Who Must Not Be Named.
Well so my TIL is that Rowling has basically become her own villain ... She Who Must Not Be Named.
EgonSpengler
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TIL (last night, technically) that Americans who want to further restrict immigration to this country are even bigger donkeys than I knew.
TIL that deaths have outpaced births in more than 2/3rds of US counties during the pandemic. Was it 73%? I have the number "73" in my head.
TIL that immigrants to the US are slightly more likely to start small businesses than people who were born here. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think it was: 11% of Americans were immigrants, and 14% of small businesses were owned by immigrants. Something like that.
TIL that a huge number of "Fortune 500" companies - was it 41%? - were founded by immigrants or their children.
TIL that deaths have outpaced births in more than 2/3rds of US counties during the pandemic. Was it 73%? I have the number "73" in my head.
TIL that immigrants to the US are slightly more likely to start small businesses than people who were born here. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think it was: 11% of Americans were immigrants, and 14% of small businesses were owned by immigrants. Something like that.
TIL that a huge number of "Fortune 500" companies - was it 41%? - were founded by immigrants or their children.
Spoiler :
I don't want to argue against that, and I don't know what the rules are in the US, but in quite some countries the requierement for immigration is work, which can include that you start your own bussiness as work. So there might be incentives, which could skew this.
EgonSpengler
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More playing Devil's Advocate:
The drop in births compared to deaths is not only due to a higher death rate for treatable health problems - and therefore unlikely to continue, as we get back to some kind of normal - but, depending on the timing of the study, the low birth rate might correlate with the most stressful days, weeks and months of the pandemic. I think I read somewhere a study that found that Americans were having less sex than usual during the pandemic, most likely due to elevated levels of stress. It turns out that being locked in a bunker with your partner during the apocalypse might not actually be as sexy as it sounds.
Re: the Fortune 500, some of those companies have been around for going on two centuries, back to the days when massive numbers of immigrants, relative to the population, were coming into this country. Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase, Ford Motor Company, Wells Fargo. With a quick Google search, ~15 million immigrants arrived between the end of the Civil War and 1900, and the population of the US in 1900 was only ~75 million. Relative to the overall population of the time, I think that's about twice the population of immigrants we have today. Plus, I think a lot of immigrants ended up having big families, so if you're including the children of immigrants, the relative numbers might go up even more.
TIL the city of Chicago was raised about 6 feet (2m) between 1856 to 1870 using jackscrews.
...One building at a time, followed by walling off a new basement before the street outside was also raised.
Raising of Chicago - Wikipedia
The painstakingly-raised city was then burned to the ground by a cow in 1871.
...One building at a time, followed by walling off a new basement before the street outside was also raised.
Raising of Chicago - Wikipedia
The painstakingly-raised city was then burned to the ground by a cow in 1871.
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.
It's the type of little-known historical datum that Terry Pratchett based his crazy Ankh-Morpork on. I.e. actual semaphore (non-electric) telegraphs existed in the 19th century and also the above is mirrored in occasional events in his stories in which people dig through earlier levels of Ankh-Morpork, which is ‘built on more Ankh-Morpork’.
TIL: the Antarctic ice sheets hold enough water to raise sea level by 190 feet.
TIL:
[Walk Back]
Reversing Course, For a Cat And Now Politicians
AFTER PRESIDENT BIDEN made an off-the-cuff remark in a speech in Warsaw last Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” his staff went into damage-control mode. As The Wall Street Journal reported, a White House official swiftly “walked back” the comment. Mr. Biden’s point, the official said, was that Mr. Putin “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” adding that the president wasn’t advocating regime change.
On Monday, however, Mr. Biden defended his statement when pressed by a reporter at a White House event. “I’m not walking anything back,” he said, explaining, “I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it.” As Politico columnist Jack Shafer wryly put it on Twitter, “Biden walks back walking back.”
“Walking back” has become the accepted turn of phrase for what happens when public figures find themselves having to backpedal in order to distance themselves from their own previously stated positions or opinions. It can also just be called a “walk-back,” as Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark observe in their 2014 book, “Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs and Washington Handshakes: Decoding the Jargon, Slang and Bluster of American Political Speech.”
This bit of political jargon has origins in the Navy and once included cats, peculiarly enough. The 1867 volume “The Sailor’s Word-Book” includes “Walk back!” as a nautical order, as in “Walk back the capstan.” A ship’s capstan is a rotating device used for pulling heavy weights like an anchor, so “walking it back” means reversing its motion by having sailors walk around it in the other direction. In an 1893 letter to the editor published in the New York Times, a Navy engineer put a playful spin on the expression. Criticizing an article by a correspondent using the pen name “Fair Play,” the engineer wrote, “No amount of ‘walking back the cat’ on the part of ‘Fair Play’ can justify his positive and unqualified assertion to the contrary.” In this context, “walking back the cat” means reversing or softening a previous position. The mental image suggests it would be even more difficult to make a cat reverse its course than a capstan. (“Herding cats” evokes a similarly intractable situation.)
It would take several decades for this Navy slang to see wider acceptance. Baseball executive Frank Lane, who served in the Navy in World War II, often used it as one of his trademark “Laneisms.” When Lane was named general manager of the Kansas City Athletics in 1961, one article said that “he hated to get caught in a position where he ‘had to walk the cat back,’ meaning, reverse himself.”
“Walking the cat back” (or “walking back the cat”) entered diplomatic-speak for retreating from a previous position in a negotiation, appearing in discussions of the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1977. In intelligence-gathering circles, “walking the cat back” also came to refer to reconstructing past events in order to understand a current situation.
Eventually the cat was removed from the phrase, leaving “walking back” to serve on its own for rhetorical backtracking. In 1986, when the Reagan administration expelled members of the Soviet mission to the United Nations under suspicion of espionage, one official told the New York Times, “State was not pleased with the decision, and they tried to walk it back.”
“Walking back” has become an increasingly common maneuver in 21st-century political talk. While the nautical origins of the expression may be forgotten, the walk-back still requires some careful navigation on the high seas of politics.
WORD ON THE STREET
BEN ZIMMER
[Walk Back]
Reversing Course, For a Cat And Now Politicians
AFTER PRESIDENT BIDEN made an off-the-cuff remark in a speech in Warsaw last Saturday that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power,” his staff went into damage-control mode. As The Wall Street Journal reported, a White House official swiftly “walked back” the comment. Mr. Biden’s point, the official said, was that Mr. Putin “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” adding that the president wasn’t advocating regime change.
On Monday, however, Mr. Biden defended his statement when pressed by a reporter at a White House event. “I’m not walking anything back,” he said, explaining, “I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it.” As Politico columnist Jack Shafer wryly put it on Twitter, “Biden walks back walking back.”
“Walking back” has become the accepted turn of phrase for what happens when public figures find themselves having to backpedal in order to distance themselves from their own previously stated positions or opinions. It can also just be called a “walk-back,” as Chuck McCutcheon and David Mark observe in their 2014 book, “Dog Whistles, Walk-Backs and Washington Handshakes: Decoding the Jargon, Slang and Bluster of American Political Speech.”
This bit of political jargon has origins in the Navy and once included cats, peculiarly enough. The 1867 volume “The Sailor’s Word-Book” includes “Walk back!” as a nautical order, as in “Walk back the capstan.” A ship’s capstan is a rotating device used for pulling heavy weights like an anchor, so “walking it back” means reversing its motion by having sailors walk around it in the other direction. In an 1893 letter to the editor published in the New York Times, a Navy engineer put a playful spin on the expression. Criticizing an article by a correspondent using the pen name “Fair Play,” the engineer wrote, “No amount of ‘walking back the cat’ on the part of ‘Fair Play’ can justify his positive and unqualified assertion to the contrary.” In this context, “walking back the cat” means reversing or softening a previous position. The mental image suggests it would be even more difficult to make a cat reverse its course than a capstan. (“Herding cats” evokes a similarly intractable situation.)
It would take several decades for this Navy slang to see wider acceptance. Baseball executive Frank Lane, who served in the Navy in World War II, often used it as one of his trademark “Laneisms.” When Lane was named general manager of the Kansas City Athletics in 1961, one article said that “he hated to get caught in a position where he ‘had to walk the cat back,’ meaning, reverse himself.”
“Walking the cat back” (or “walking back the cat”) entered diplomatic-speak for retreating from a previous position in a negotiation, appearing in discussions of the U.S.-Soviet Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1977. In intelligence-gathering circles, “walking the cat back” also came to refer to reconstructing past events in order to understand a current situation.
Eventually the cat was removed from the phrase, leaving “walking back” to serve on its own for rhetorical backtracking. In 1986, when the Reagan administration expelled members of the Soviet mission to the United Nations under suspicion of espionage, one official told the New York Times, “State was not pleased with the decision, and they tried to walk it back.”
“Walking back” has become an increasingly common maneuver in 21st-century political talk. While the nautical origins of the expression may be forgotten, the walk-back still requires some careful navigation on the high seas of politics.
WORD ON THE STREET
BEN ZIMMER
Ferocitus
Deity
Also, why does the White House have to walk back so many statements made by Joe Biden?
It's like someone else is operating the strings and he's just a marionette.
It's like someone else is operating the strings and he's just a marionette.
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