Watch This Before Selling A.I Art On Etsy Using MidJourney (Avoid Future Lawsuits)

mid-journey Dolly all of these people still have to comply with trademark well even though they fall into that exception so if for some reason you were able to get your Picasso that you drew back out of something like mid-journey you could then go to them and say hey this this violates uh copyright law I'd like to to file a dmca takedown or whatever the appropriate uh thing would be at that point today is going to be a very very cool topic and one that has been asked a lot lately because we're talking about this thing called Ai and uh really what is legal what are we allowed to use are we allowed to create digital art using AI for our designs for print on demand and can we sell them it's a great question so I had Chris actually do a little bit of digging this week because uh well he's good at digging and finding out all of the all of the legal terms kind of usually buried down inside of a lot of those documents so I had Chris do that and uh Chris is actually going to go through and share with us what he has learned and we talked a little bit last week Scott about one of our new favorite tools for being able to do a few different things in the print on demand World which was mid-journey right which is one of these AI artificial intelligence not Adobe Illustrator right artificial intelligence tools that allows us to get more done in less time or for somebody like me who has zero design skills uh it allows me to actually be able to create elements create full designs and create all of those things and we had some people asking hey you guys previously had talked about the fact that you weren't totally comfortable with it that some of the you know some of the ways that people were using it you weren't really fans of and there are always going to be edge cases but since we we've been digging through these tools we found specifically mid-journey that allows us to do all of these kinds of things that we'll be diving into today and kind of talking through right it does come down to how you use them and when they're used and all of those kinds of things but if you're looking for a way to be able to get more done it's definitely doable we're going to dive into some of the ins and outs of when and how you should be using these tools and some of those kinds of things today just to clear up any of those remaining questions um but these are definitely tools and again it depends on the tool we specifically are are fans of mid Journey right now and we'll dive into some of the reasons why uh as we get further in here but these are things that can be used in your business generally speaking it just depends on how and and when you're using them and if you're looking for a way to come up with something that you can't find otherwise they definitely have a place in your business even right now as we're kind of wading through the gray area of up and coming technology versus us or UK law which is not the world's sexiest topic but it's definitely something that we need to to talk about and Scott I'm sure you know law is almost always behind technology um so we'll be diving into some of some of the the reasons when and how and all of that fun stuff as we we work our way through the material here today because what we're talking about super sexy topic right is it illegal uh to sell AI art designs what are some of the legal implications what are some of the things that we need to talk about especially if we're talking about for Etsy for print on demand something like that right and so the the question becomes who owns these and what's going on and before we get started I just want to make sure that everybody knows and I knew Scott would get a kick out of this that neither of us are attorneys however we both have the skills to use AI to make ourselves look like one so in this case what I did was I just went to mid-journey I uploaded a old photo that I found on Facebook of me and I said can you make me look like a middle-aged attorney and this is what came back so that is proof that we can use AI to make us look like attorneys whether we are or not but you don't have to be an attorney to understand the basics of these things and some of the you know some of the very specific questions about if I use this percentage and all of those kinds of things even attorneys don't necessarily know but we can give you the uh the rough guidance and by covering the three things that we're going to be covering here today you guys are going to really have an understanding of what are the do's and don'ts to make sure that you stay protected with something like this so what we actually are going to be covering is three different pieces right the first is is it even legal to use AI to create art right are we just stealing from other people or is this something we can actually do and then if it is legal right who owns it do I own it does the original person that it took you know the eyes from do they own it does mid-journey themselves own it and then if I own it can I then turn around and sell it so we're going to cover all three of those things as we're diving in and like Scott like you said if you guys have any questions about this along the way make sure to ask them because this is sort of a nebulous topic right it's not go here click this button I know there's going to be some things that come up and our general guidance on that is if you have that question and you're brave enough to ask it there's probably 10 or 15 other people who are watching or listening and have that same question but didn't have the chance or didn't have the ability to ask it so make sure that as we're working through this that you ask any questions along the way we'll save a little bit of time at the at the end so the the first thing uh is is it legal and the the two arguments that you typically hear against using AI for anything but specifically for something like a print-on-demand business is well it's cheating because it doesn't involve any skill right so Scott I I want to address this because this isn't really a legal argument but it's more of an argument that I hear from designers um specifically you know somebody like my cousin who is a professional graphic designer teaches graphic design right they say it's cheating because it doesn't involve any skill and that's not really a legal argument but it's more of like an ethical or uh a complaint really right and so would you say it's cheating to buy a dog house that's pre-built versus making one because you have zero carpentry skills right either way you end up with a dog house right and so even though even though we might be not giving our local Carpenter quite as much business because we're buying a dog house on Amazon and just putting it together with pegs and glue or whatever right it's not really any different so the the cheating argument doesn't really fly with me because just because I don't know how to go into Adobe Illustrator and make something look pretty doesn't mean that I can't create art right there's literally art that sells for millions of dollars that is a blue painted canvas it's got I think you've seen this it's probably even called blue and somebody just took a canvas and painted it blue but because they're a famous artist right that is now art and art is subjective and so to me that's no different than me creating something using AI right art is subjective and so it's not really cheating and quite honestly it does involve a good bit of skill to get good things back at least at this point from AI so let's kind of ignore that for just a second but the the second one is it can't be legal because it's built from other people's work right and so this is the one that has a little bit more of a leg to stand on but not really if you guys aren't familiar with how these systems work we're gonna get kind of nerdy here for a second Scott I don't know if you know how these systems are trained uh but essentially what they do is they take millions and millions of images and they then break that down into individual pieces of code so the easiest way to think about this uh is if we go back to that blue example right a computer out of the box doesn't understand what blue is it doesn't understand the concept of blue it doesn't understand that a color is a thing right and so what we then have to do to teach a computer what blue is is take thousands or millions of pictures of something that is blue and tell the computer this is blue this is blue this is also blue right until it starts to understand and is able to identify what blue is and if you guys have ever gone and filled out one of those stupid uh capture things where it's like select the stop sign guess what yes that does help protect forms but that's also teaching computers what a stop sign is right that's literally the point of those things it helps secure a form but it also lets a computer start to learn in the background and be able to identify a stop sign or traffic lights or crosswalks or whatever it is that it has you do when you fill out one of those silly things right and so what is the exception if we're taking a photo that somebody else took or we're taking a Michelangelo painting how is it that we can use a portion of that in this algorithm well first of all it comes it really comes down to what is called fair use right and so there's a bunch of exceptions to copyrights and trademarks but fair use is the big one it's also the hardest and most complicated to understand because it really depends right on what is and what is in fair use but essentially we're talking about taking the minimal amount right so in this case if we trained it on a million images and one of those happens to be a Picasso that'd be one one millionth of what this thing is trained on right so we're using a very minimal amount of that and we can't get that Picasso back out right so the way that these are designed is actually they take that Picasso and they break it down into code so that you can't actually then take that Picasso back out of mid-journey or uh open ai's dolly or any of these other programs right and so what this comes down to is what's the fair use and transformation exception to copyright and trademark and the the legalese behind this is was the material used and transformed by adding new expression or meaning well if it's one one millionth of what this thing understands and we're not trying to get that exact Picasso back out but we want something that's in the style or related to Picasso that is used and transformed and it's adding new expression or meaning right the other part of this exception is was it value added was it changed and the answer is yes and we can see this with something like mid Journey Scott and I know that you have done this uh where we take and upload a photo that we have the rights to right just like right here at the very beginning where I took this photo of me that I own the trademark of this is a fair use exception to my trademark because it's an artistic interpretation of the original photo right and well I'm not going to get into all the ins and outs and when it may or may not be that is how and why trademark law is is applied in this and that's why it's legal to actually be able to use these things to create art we are not knocking off the original artist we're using a little bit the minimum amount of information to create a new interpretation of those things this is the same reason why Scott and I can both take the same exact prompt into something like mid-journey and get two very different results back out because it's all based on interpretation right so now that we understand a little bit about fair use let's talk about keeping ourselves on the right side of this right and there are still ways like I mentioned at the beginning of this that we can find ourselves in a more gray area than the very basic non-gray area that we're in to start with right we are essentially okay to use this but we can put ourselves in more of a dangerous situation by doing one of two things one if we specifically are trying to create a Picasso and we say something like do this in the style of Picasso Picasso Picasso Picasso Picasso it's going to start to use more of the Picasso style images that it has uploaded right that could potentially get us into a gray area the other side of this is most of these platforms specifically something like mid-journey allow us to upload an inspirational image right something that we want to use that the system can identify and work off of if we just go to Google and type in stock photos and we don't have the rights to use those images well then that potentially could take us into a gray area again not an attorney you still could probably get away with it because of the fair use exceptions I just wouldn't recommend that anybody do that right there's no reason to upload something that you don't have the rights to and there's no reason to necessarily say and try to get that Picasso that was uploaded back out of the system right if we're using this we're using this to create our own designs just steer clear of those two things and you're going to be on the right side of this does this make sense so far Scott yeah absolutely uh I I think bottom line is like you're saying Chris and you're kind of painting that picture if you will of you know you have to also understand and use some common sense like if you are using something that does not belong to you then you're running the risk more so right like of there being an issue but for the most part we're using commands prompts and those are unique to us but also even if I use the same it's not going to give me the same result so yeah I think perfect keep going I love where you're going with this yeah so so in addition to that right all of these platforms do have to enforce existing trademark law right they don't just exist in a vacuum so if for whatever reason you think your work was used or was gotten back out of these types of systems they all have to have the same exact trademark enforcement as anybody else would right it's the same reason you hear about Etsy occasionally taking down somebody's store because they were listing Disney stuff right mid Journey Dolly all of these people still have to comply with trademark well even though they fall into that exception so if for some reason you were able to get your Picasso that you drew back out of something like mid-journey you could then go to them and say hey this this violates uh copyright law I'd like to file a dmca takedown or whatever the appropriate uh thing would be at that point so they do still have to comply with that the stuff that they're giving you is an exception to any of the stuff that was used to include it right so if if it's legal to create that then begs the questions God who owns it and who actually creates it right like if if I'm not the one doodling on a page is it the same thing as me doodling on a page or is it something else and the answer is it depends and just to to make Scott laugh yet again I went to chat GPT just to see uh if chat GPT knew anything about me and I asked it why I constantly say it depends and they said you know it he says it in response to a bunch of different questions and situations because usually there's a bunch of multiple factors right then they go into a whole marketing analogy which cracks me up because chat GPT knows that we occasionally talk about digital marketing right so the fact that it Associated that made me laugh but the answer is it depends and it depends on three main factors the first is which platform is used right some of the platforms including mid-journey on their their free plan and if you create any images publicly right so if you just go into their main feed and you create images they own some rights to those images um it also depends on the platform itself right Dali has a different agreement than mid-journey mid-journey generally speaking they say we share the the ownership rights of that right the third thing here is was the work entirely created by Ai and this is a court case Scott that came down I believe it was about two weeks ago as of the time of recording this about a comic book where the art was completely created by mid-journey specifically and essentially what the court decision said was the work as a whole so the comic book you can have the copyright on and own the images you can sell that's fine but if somebody wanted to take that image from the cover just the image not the text not the entire work right and they wanted to use it because it wasn't created by a human if they had a way of getting that original image then yeah they could right so you own anything that you compile with AI and you own anything that you create but you can't necessarily trademark or copyright a compilation the same way that you could if you hand Drew all of the elements so if we hand Illustrated this comic book we would have the rights right to resell it just like we do here and we would have the rights to trademark and copyright and prevent that image from being distributed in any way that we didn't like in the case of something like AI currently we can sell it we can distribute it but if somebody wanted to take that image and put it on a t-shirt they technically could do that right and so where that kind of leaves us is in kind of an interesting situation in terms of the ownership of these images right if I use mid-journey to create a compilation to put on my my t-shirt right I can sell it that's fine I can put it on that t-shirt but I don't own a copyright or a trademark to it the same way I would if I created it inside of Adobe Illustrator for example right if however I go into something like mid-journey and I create the barn and the chicken and then I use something like canva to put them together into that image that we see in the bottom right hand corner which is just a barn or a chicken standing in front of a barn which is the same thing I asked my journey to create to begin with then I have more ownership and more ability to trademark and copyright that right and so if it's possible for somebody to find that image in mid-journey and could they also put it on a print on demand t-shirt on Etsy technically yes right but if we compile those different elements and then create that that then becomes no different than anything else that we would create so that makes sense Scott either way we have the the right to it it's just how open that right is for other people to potentially use does that make sense yeah no it makes 100 sense and you know I think to your point like we can create full-on designs that were created from Ai and technically we have some ownership in that because we've created it with our own prompts with and like you said like millions and millions of data points that are being thrown out there and kind of brought together which we don't I don't really understand how that all works but it does it right and then we have ownership of that because we created it with our hands but yet we didn't draw it right it's kind of like someone with a you know that paints with uh you know an iPad right well someone might be a good painter there but might not be as good a painter on paper but they choose to use that so they're using technology to basically take what's here and put it here now if you don't have the design skills but you have like a decent eye for what looks good then you can somewhat create that right um and then the other side of it is being able to create components right like let's say that you wanted to create like that that chicken scene there that Chris created right it's like you create the chicken you create the barn you might create a cow and then you take them all together and compile them and now that's your own image it's very very uh similar to what uh Kittle is allowing people to do where it's taking a graphic designer and they're making designs come into this one platform and then people can kind of piggyback off of each other and use components from each other from their designs but they can't sell the design as a whole by it's because it's it wasn't compiled so yes um I think it's great and I think also just to kind of like like you did there Chris in your picture in that little slide with you as the attorney we are not attorneys so what we are saying is just what we are interpreting from what we're reading and what we're seeing and all of that stuff I will say uh Shutterstock has their own Ai and they have other rules and regulations in there about what they're they're more or less staying clear of it as I noticed mid journey is kind of went a little bit deeper and kind of dug through and said what they feel is the legal side of it so you do have to figure out what platform you're using and kind of look at their terms of service yeah and it is it is gonna vary but if you're specifically looking to create either elements or whole designs everything that we've played with so far mid-journey is the best which is why I'm using their terms as the examples because we can't go through all 900 different platforms and there's a new one coming up every day right so you are going to want to take a look at that um and where you will find that is actually the thing that's that's coming up next here Scott uh which is can you sell this stuff and the answer is it depends on two things right which platform are you using some of them do not allow you to sell it right and you have to look at what's called the usage rights or the license agreement um and some of them do allow you to sell so these are the plans like the paid plans for mid-journey and if you look under their free trial which is not really a trial uh it just you know you can create as much as you kind of want there um you just can't then turn around and sell it right uh as soon as you move to a paid plan they move to a commercial agreement so you have the ability to sell and use those things anyway that you want they do still reserve the rights right to have other people be able to use that work just like we talked about in the court case because if it's created publicly on something like mid-journey other people can remix it they can do other things with it and use that as the foundation of the their work then right just like you're using the millions or hundreds of millions of images that this thing was trained on right to create your new piece of work every new piece of work that's created inside of mid-journey and this applies to the other platforms as well is then used to create further work does that make sense and so they reserve some rights to it they can't sell it they can't do those kinds of things but they can still use that as inspiration and as something that other people can work off of even on the paid plan uh the other thing is when you move to a paid plan with something like mid-journey and I mentioned this a couple minutes ago Scott they have what they call stealth mode uh on their their Pro Plan which means it's not available publicly anywhere that doesn't necessarily mean that somebody still wouldn't get a portion of that if they type in some of the same keywords and some of those kinds of things but it does kind of keep it out of the public eye which just means it's less likely to be used so right if you're really worried about someone taking something that you created in mid-journey you can always upgrade to their their Pro Plan and move into something like self mode but Scott you and I were talking about this the other day and we said you know even if you can't trademark the full design that you created the same way that you could uh if you drew it by hand is that really a big deal because unless somebody's going in and just straight up ripping you off uh because they find that exact image they're never going to get the same result back out so is it really something that we have to worry about and the answer is not really right like unless you're an IP attorney the ability for other people to like see and use that stuff shouldn't really concern you at least in my mind if you're focused on creating designs and creating design elements or creating product mock-ups using this the fact that it exists in a nebulous system somewhere and somebody somewhere might be able to find the chicken that you created at some point and use it for something else that's not like your IP right anyway and as a small business owner you even if you did own all of the rights to it you probably couldn't afford the attorney that you would need to enforce that anyway so it's not really a concern and if we're focused on creating those elements and those designs using something like this as long as you are in a paid plan right with something like mid-journey or another tool that allows you commercial rights the commercial ability to use this and it's not under a Creative Commons license which is usually the the free license that they use uh then you are okay to create it to use it and to sell it inside of something like an Etsy print on demand business does that make sense yeah no that's great yeah no I I think you know right now it's new right like I say new it's been out for a little while but it's becoming more mainstream and I think also now we have to start looking at okay what are the rules what are the laws what is the what is the the legal side of these things and all we can do is really read through the documentation and that's why we wanted to do this today for you guys is really have Chris kind of dig in see what it's saying and kind of break it down for what we understand it to be used as but also to kind of use some common sense because the way I look at it is if I'm taking something that uh does not belong to me right and then selling that well that's that's the problem right well how can I make my design my design right and to me the way to do that is come up with some really good prompts okay everything is driven by prompts commands as they call it right so we want to have good prompts think of your prompts and the image that you might be using as a reference image think of that as making that project that design even more unique to yourself

Channel: Brand Creators

Views: 57,460

Keywords: selling on etsy, etsy, etsy shop for beginners, sell on etsy, how to sell on etsy, how to start an etsy shop, etsy business, work from home jobs, make money online, how to make money online, how to start an online business, etsy shop, make money on etsy, etsy print on demand, etsy digital products, what to sell on etsy, etsy store, how to sell on etsy for beginners, etsy seo 2022, etsy seo, etsy seo optimization, etsy seo hacks, selling ai art, selling ai generated art

Id: WE1HEHuNQEU

Length: 24min 47sec (1487 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 20 2023