Not at all: logical ethical principles (golden rule, harm principle, freedom of the individual) & basic individual liberties in a free society. Such a society where people are free to express themselves without doing actual harm is a benefit to the world “at large”. The alternative would be bleak.

To answer your question, it’s more about arguing for basic freedoms consistently than about arguing for disrespect.

When approaching these ethical questions, I think it’s best to focus on the individual & moral reciprocity: should someone be able to express themselves in a way that offends me? As long as it obeys the harm principle, the answer is yes. Accordingly, anyone should be free to express themselves with imagery in the style of Ghibli (using tools such as AI) even if it offends the studio’s founder, since it results in no actual harm.

Since morality should be based on universal principles that don’t depend on contingent facts of an agent (such as their characteristics), I find it clarifies questions to approach technology with their non-technological equivalents. Would it be wrong to train a person to learn Ghibli art style so they could produce similar works in that style on demand? The harm of that is unclear, and I would think it’s fine.

I don’t see a general duty for a free society to fulfill a wish unless it’s more of a claim right than a wish. In particular, criticism is a basic part of art: a duty not to criticize artists (who wish not to be criticized) would be unjust. While an artist should get credit (and all due intellectual property rights) for their work, once it’s out in the wild it takes on a life of its own: people are free to criticize it, parody it, & make fair use of it. Some wishes don’t need to be fulfilled.

you’re a bad troll

Haters gonna hate.

the entire thread was about AI IP theft

Answered: that part you didn’t read.

It’s funny the largely anti-capitalist crowd doesn’t care about intellectual property until their favorite bogeyman shows up. Then they suddenly “care”: whatever it takes to take down AI, right? Even if it takes us down with it.

I don’t like weak arguments that try to manipulate our emotions with our favorite targets of animus, nebulous claims of threats to cherished values, misuse of the word fascism. The person’s liberty to express themselves (even in ways we dislike with technology we dislike) is more important than an argument that rings false.

you threw in a red herring

Your moral hypocrisy? The coherence of your “moral code”?

just to make personal attacks against me

Does it suck to be judged for the actions you’ve demonstrated here?

I’m also not here contemplating killing someone over dubious theft (of expressions!): that was all you.

when you are challenged you claim abelism

Also, whenever I come across it & feel moved: the casual inconsiderateness of online images of text is noticeable & easy to call out. Instead of distracting nonsense, turning that useless online outrage & public shame toward something concrete we ourselves can address today (like web accessibility) might do some tangible good for a change. Sustained long enough, it might catch on & make us more considerate in that 1 small yet noticeable way.

it’s really pathetic and gives differently-abled people a bad name. you should be ashamed of yourself

Does it? Someone here should be ashamed.

If we’re done getting distracted with ourselves, the point remains that the article is a manipulative argument lacking substance.

more images of text alt text that misleads people with accessibility needs

So just to be clear

• false “IP theft” (derivative works in a similar style aren’t theft) that harms no one violates your moral code
• discrimination that objectively disadvantages the disabled is fine to you.

Much can be understood about someone’s sense of morality in their actions (eligible for moral consideration) toward the disadvantaged. Does that person treat others as that person would want to be treated by them? Do they prioritize a cause that doesn’t address a credible harm over their easily addressable actions that do cause credible harm?

Your moral code & moral claims seem confused & mistaken.

Well, you’re wrong.

image of text
no alt text
people with accessibility needs can’t read this

And you’re ableist for that. Good job.

When a machine imitates me, I take it as an insult to life itself.

I might be flattered that someone bothered to make a machine do that. Massaging software to do that also takes skill?

When GitHub Copilot lifts my opensource code, I’m not offended. I only cringe a bit when it’s bad code I regret committing.

they needed respect to be creative unfettered

Respectfully, I don’t see what unfettered here is adding. I clarified by editing the earlier comment to request to explain the logic.

How does “respect” “allow” an artist “unfettered creativity”? How exactly is instructing others how to treat/imitate their work & expecting their wishes to be fulfilled promoting “unfettered creativity”? Seems like the opposite. Can you break that down into logic?

Are you suggesting artists are fragile beings whose creativity only exists at the mercy of our “respect” and the slightest disrespect breaks them? That seems rather self-important.

I submit that artists don’t need our respect to be creative: the suggestion is belittling to artists.

The real point is the article fails to argue well.

We’re acting as if their opinion always mattered just as much as it does now.

So not at all: got it.

you should have the right to say “I don’t want you to imitate my exact style”

You do.

people should respect that

“That’s just like your opinion, man.” meme goes here.

The argument seems to amount to “stop using/imitating my work to express yourself in ways I don’t like”, which is futile & senseless.

It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t, either. It is a fallacy of modal logic to claim an action that is not one that should be done is an action that should not be done.

If we limited ourselves to doing what we should, then entertainment like Ghibli wouldn’t exist, and you wouldn’t write comments here. There’s no reason you should write comments here, yet you did. Does that mean you’re “devoid of any morals” & “lack the integrity expected of a contributing adult”?

Imitation & derivative works hardly rise to anything worth fussing or losing total perspective over. If we pay attention, all human creativity is derivative, nothing is truly original. Works build on & reference each other. Techniques get refined. It’s why we have genres. From the Epic of Gilgamesh & ancient mythology to modern storytelling, or the development of perspective in graphical works across time, there’s a clear process of imitation & development across all of it.

Oddly enough, Princess Mononoke is inspired by the Cedar Forest guardian Humbaba from the Epic of Gilgamesh. Should we also condemn Ghibli’s “lack of integrity” for their “intellectual property theft” from the ancient Mesopotamians?

If Ghibli were somehow deprived of economic gain & welfare due to others passing off derived work as their own, then you might have a point. However, I doubt when they sincerely want to watch Ghibli, people decide instead to watch LLM generated stills on social media that no one would pay for. They’re no substitute for real, creative output. If anything, the increased exposure stirs interest in the real work of Ghibli. Even the objection is speculation: the article doesn’t state Miyazaki objected, it merely argued he would. So, no, you don’t have a real point here, either.

This is as much “theft” as any other imitative, derivative expression. I’ll take free speech over decrying fake “theft”.

Are we pretending this is new & their opinion matters in some new way it hasn’t before?

There might be an argument to demand licensing royalties on intellectual property. Is that too capitalist? Maybe it’s fine if we work that into the word fascism somehow, wear it out a bit more to hit that sweet spot. Ooh.

Cool, another preachy argument that jumps to irrational conclusions. Because Ghibli?

It is a display of power: You as an artist, an animator, an illustrator, a writer, any creative person are powerless. We will take what we want and do what we want. Because we can.

Uh…we always could & did. Imitators have been doing that since always, long before LLMs. No one owns an art style.

This is the idea of might makes right. The banner that every totalitarian and fascist government rallied under.

That’s the argument? Plagiarism & imitating art styles is fascism? Wow! The rest of the article is worse.

Please make the word fascism more meaningless.

The number of times I’ve seen screencaptures of text on a coding job that makes me think/say “you’re a coder, I’m a coder, you know we’ll need this as text, so what the fuck is wrong with you?” is too many.

Images of text happen way too often everywhere including lemmy. And they grace us without alt text like they’re going out of their way to fuck us & people with accessibility needs especially hard.

That’s the most delulu & citation-free comment I’ve read in recent time: good job!

The premise of free expression is that the people get to decide what speech they want to hear, and it’s not the role of an authority to decide that for them. Seems you oppose that liberty & want an authority to decide. Isn’t there a name for people who oppose freedom & want everyone to obey authority? Aren’t there some rather unsavory characters who agree with you? That’s some awfully bad company: despite your superficial differences, you’re a bit too alike.

because calling out nazis as liars about their interest in free speech has got to mean abandoning freedom of speech.

No duh insincere people claiming to advocate for free speech don’t really mean it. This isn’t exactly new or debatable: what is argued with it is debatable.

Earlier, you write about “statements nearly impossible to implement” & looking for “solutions” as if free speech needs solving. It doesn’t. Free speech is its own solution: it means free for speech you dislike and for speech to answer it. There’s nothing to solve but a lack of dedication to & endurance of free speech.

application of ethical principles may change

this is a nice summary statement here.

Not to be lifted out of context, “people’s awareness & recognition of” is an important part of that quote.

It doesn’t mean their application to the same circumstances changes. What changes is people’s awareness/recognition, not that it applies or how (it always applied the moment it was possible to apply). Like finally recognizing equal rights apply to women or minorities. Or that protesting topless is protected speech. Or that free speech applies to communication over new technologies.

If you got that, though, then it’s a nice summary.

Technologies

yes

and ethics continuously change

no

and adapt to new technologies

Yes. Technology may change, people’s awareness & recognition of the application of ethical principles may change, however that doesn’t mean the principles themselves change.

In terms of ethical reasoning, the essence of a matter may remain the same regardless of superficial guises (like technology). Adapting to a technology means applying the same general principles to novel, special cases. The principles concern rights & moral obligations people have to each other. Technology isn’t essential or relevant: the use of technology to perform an action is irrelevant to whether that action is right or wrong. The principles themselves can be timeless, immutable, and concern only essentials necessary to evaluate actions. Thinking otherwise indicates confusion & someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

I’m not interested in discussing the analogies of going from codexes to printed books vs. going from printed hard copies to human-human interactions being hijacked by human-passing bots, because to me these are evidently not comparable.

Well, you’re wrong. They’re ultimately ways of disseminating expression. Just because you think some shiny, new, whizzy bang doodad fundamentally changes everything doesn’t mean it does.

It probably indicates lack of historical perspective. These problems you think are new aren’t. People have long been complaining about lies spreading faster than truth, the public being disinformed & easily manipulated. In the previous century, the US has been through worse with disfranchisement, Jim Crow, internment camps, violent white supremacy, the red scare, McCarthyism. Yet now contagious stupidity spread through automations is an unprecedented threat unlike the contagious stupidity of the past? Large scale stupidity isn’t new. Freedom of speech was essential to anti-authoritarian, civil rights, and counterculture movements.

There’s something contradictory about trying to defend liberal society by surrendering a critical part of it.

The fact that this discussion is taking place on Lemmy and not Xitter tells plenty about the actual complexities of this story.

Not really. Decentralization is part of the solution.

Some people never liked Twitter.

Claim it, twist it, poison it, ruin it.

Nothing new historically. You don’t have to accept their false premises by surrendering ideas to them.

things people used to care about or that used to be innocuous

Free speech is power, not innocuous: authorities fear it. It belongs to the people unless they surrender it.

Used to care about? Only if you let them stop you.

That’s just technology & fearmongering. Socrates was critical of writing out of concerns it would deteriorate minds & make superficial thinkers. Critics were concerned the printing press would lead to widespread moral degradation with the abundance of low-quality literature. People criticized television & media for brain rot.

Guess what you’re the next iteration of?

Technologies change, yet good principles hold regardless.

You know what you can do with free speech? More free speech. No one has a monopoly on LLM, bots, or algorithms. If people were inclined, they could launch these technologies to counter messages they oppose. People can choose to tune out & disregard expressions. Much more can be done with free speech.

Does anyone?

Yes, old-school liberals, the ACLU, etc.

It’s bizarre & disappointing that newer generations seem to associate freedom of speech with right-wing authoritarians when freedom of speech has been a firmly liberal value advanced through the enlightenment & civil rights movement. Everyone ought to defend it.

The point of my post is that some of the loudest proponents of free speech have ulterior motives.

So what? Free speech is still right: everyone should fervently defend it. Whether they’re sincere about it or not, free speech is indispensable to a liberal democracy.

The problem isn’t free speech. The problem is people who want to take it all away. If you fall into the trap of abandoning basic values from the enlightenment when they make it inconvenient, then you play into their game & help them set back society.