Danbooru

Implication requests for meta:artist_* tags

Posted under General

Original post:

To be clear, this thread is just to help provide a record for artist wishes on this issue. The lack of a statement does not mean they are okay with their work being used. Danbooru is not involved with ai-generated art and ultimately has no control over what third-parties do with scraped data. If you are training an AI model you should get explicit permission from artists before hand.

Continuing from my suggestion in forum #223089 here's a thread for implication requests to do not train for artists that have stated that they do not want their art used to train image-generation AI. It might be useful to also create an ok to train tag as well for artists that have stated the opposite. If such a tag ends up existing put those implication requests in this thread as well.

Of course this does little to stop AI scrapers that don't care about an artist's wishes, but it could end up aiding Spawning's global opt-out efforts, or efforts by groups with similar goals.

This is currently an Artist tag and not a Meta tag due to restrictions on cross-category implication. I have created an issue on GitHub to discuss specifically allowing Artist -> Meta cross-category implications.

If I've in any way jumped the gun or stepped on anyone's toes in the creation of this thread I apologize. I am simply an individual that enjoys this site and wants to help.

Guidelines for requests
  • Don't add do not train tags by hand. Make an implication requestpost in this thread instead.
  • Provide a link to some sort of statement by the artist that expresses their wishes on the use of their art in training image-generation AI.

Updated

nonamethanks said:

This is not going to work. Artists need to contact the makers of those models themselves. Nobody creating a model in order to sell it would care what an aggregator site says.

I agree, they do need to contact the creators of the models that are trained on their work. As for people caring what an "aggregator site" says, I think that's selling Danbooru a bit short. This site is one of the best places for people to lookup information about an artist they like. I'd argue it's moved beyond it's roots as merely an imageboard and has become, or at least could become, more of archive of art with a database of high quality metadata.

If the data doesn't exist or isn't easily available then I agree nobody will care, but if it does then I think it can be of use genuine use to someone out there. That someone could be a good-faith AI model developer, a site like Spawning.ai, or potentially even artists themselves fighting against companies that profit off of their work such as NovelAI.

BUR #12628 has been rejected.

category do_not_train -> meta
rename do_not_train -> artist_against_ai-training

Hrmm, I may be focusing too much on this specific issue instead of doing a proper job of explaining why anyone would want artist tags implying meta tags. I'll be editing the original post shortly to expand it's scope. Hopefully this change will make a few people happier now that it's not focused on current happenings. Even if you don't agree with the whole do not train tag idea I believe there is actual use for artist -> meta tag implication beyond that.

Additionally here's a tag rename taking into consideration the suggestion from forum #223160.

You are misunderstanding the problem we have. Us having a tag like this gives the implication that we are responsible for or otherwise have some semblance of control over what the AI developers do. We do not. They could just completely ignore this tag then we look like assholes for ignoring the artist's wishes. You are too strung up on the idea that somehow we can solve this despite us not being the problem to begin with. If the artists do not want their work used by AI they will have to contact the AI developers directly and not attempt to use us as some proxy with no relation to them.

You really seem to be jumping the gun on a lot of these things. Without any discussion you are making the assumption that any of these things you are suggesting are things we want. In reality they are not things we want. Now you're suggesting we have a canadian meta-tag for artists? In what world is that useful information to have on a post? You really are not thinking these things out thoroughly.

Artist tags shouldn't be implicating anything, least of all tags from other categories. Banned artist is a special case. Tags for identifying an artist's nationality are just a bad idea in general.

None of the existing meta tags would be appropriate implication targets, and the proposed example tags don't fit what meta tags are meant for. Meta tags describe something about the image that doesn't pertain to its content, such as its file size (e.g. absurdres), banned artist describes the artist. The proposed do not train tag is also about the artist, not the post itself.

Talulah said:

You are misunderstanding the problem we have. Us having a tag like this gives the implication that we are responsible for or otherwise have some semblance of control over what the AI developers do. We do not. They could just completely ignore this tag then we look like assholes for ignoring the artist's wishes. You are too strung up on the idea that somehow we can solve this despite us not being the problem to begin with. If the artists do not want their work used by AI they will have to contact the AI developers directly and not attempt to use us as some proxy with no relation to them.

Which is why it's no longer mentioned, I still think an indicator like that would be useful, but I'm no longer arguing for it anymore.

Talulah said:

You really seem to be jumping the gun on a lot of these things. Without any discussion you are making the assumption that any of these things you are suggesting are things we want. In reality they are not things we want. Now you're suggesting we have a canadian meta-tag for artists? In what world is that useful information to have on a post? You really are not thinking these things out thoroughly.

Well, I've seen such data listed in an artist's wiki pages, nyantcha's for instance, I think it could be useful to search based on that info.

blindVigil said:

Artist tags shouldn't be implicating anything, least of all tags from other categories. Banned artist is a special case. Tags for identifying an artist's nationality are just a bad idea in general.

None of the existing meta tags would be appropriate implication targets, and the proposed example tags don't fit what meta tags are meant for. Meta tags describe something about the image that doesn't pertain to its content, such as its file size (e.g. absurdres), banned artist describes the artist. The proposed do not train tag is also about the artist, not the post itself.

I see, if nationality isn't desired that can be mentioned somewhere. I agree that the current meta tags are not useful to be implicated, that's why I didn't give tags like absurdres as an example. As for meta tags being meant for something that describes the image but not the content itself, artist_vtuber would describe that the image is drawn by a vtuber at the very least. I fail to see see how that doesn't fit with what meta tags are for.

nonamethanks said:

That kind of info should be nuked on sight. It's not unusual for artists to request takedowns because of personal stuff like that.

Fair, nationality may be too personal. I was unaware that such info should be scrubbed from wikis, I just noticed it listed on a couple and I didn't see any warning against it in howto:wiki. With that said, I can't see them minding more benign things like artist_vtuber. For context, I was specifically thinking of artists like marota, gaikiken, and limebreaker with that example.

Updated

Aside from protecting personal information, having tags for artists' nationalities is just weird. Why would we want to pay this much attention on artist traits, we’re not an artist wiki after all. Plus, does knowing something about that artist makes you change your opinion on them? Maybe, in some case it’s true. You can note it on their artist page, but you definitely don’t want to have it hanging on the front page, as it the site is giving it an emphasis.

As for vtuber artists, you can create a tag group, but having a tag is too excessive imo.

ComradeMokou said:

BUR #12628 has been rejected.

category do_not_train -> meta
rename do_not_train -> artist_against_ai-training

Hrmm, I may be focusing too much on this specific issue instead of doing a proper job of explaining why anyone would want artist tags implying meta tags. I'll be editing the original post shortly to expand it's scope. Hopefully this change will make a few people happier now that it's not focused on current happenings. Even if you don't agree with the whole do not train tag idea I believe there is actual use for artist -> meta tag implication beyond that.

Additionally here's a tag rename taking into consideration the suggestion from forum #223160.

Rejecting this for a couple of reasons:

  • It can create the false impression that we're the ones responsible for this, when we're not.
  • I've already seen people on 4chan mentioning the do_no_train tag and getting the story wrong. I've seen people talking about it like it's a done deal, or that it's an official idea from Danbooru, when it's just a user proposal.

For now I think it's a better idea to direct people towards https://haveibeentrained.com and https://spawning.ai if they want to try to opt-out globally. I can't vouch for whether Spawning.ai will be a success, but so far they're the only ones I've seen who are even attempting to tackle the problem of letting artists opt-out from AI training globally.

There's a good article on this whole topic from Vice from about a week ago: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad58k/ai-is-probably-using-your-images-and-its-not-easy-to-opt-out. The short answer is that it's hard to do anything about it because it comes from multiple groups building models and scraping data from the entire internet, so there's no one party anyone can turn to.

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