This is great. I love seeing enhanced version of those altars.

Looks pretty nice. I'm not sure you can claim copyright (CC-BY-SA) on something you've put no creative effort into though, these may be public domain. I'm not sure how complex input prompts to an AI are, but things such as a single sentence aren't copyrightable. Selection of items may be copyrightable, but only as a whole without the individual works being under copyright.

That with sculls on stack, then books and potions are very good and maybe the Bow, ..rest is for garbage in my opinion.

There is a concept called "sweat of the brow" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow) that says author gains copyright solely for his effort on the work, not for creativity, however this principle does not usually apply today even though many try to argue with it -- if it applied we could copyright even simple mathematical formulas etc., i.e. there has to be a non-trivial amount of own artistic expression in a work for it to be copyrightable, effort alone doesn't count. There has also been the famous case of an ape taking photo which was later ruled to be in the public domain, only humans can gain copyright. I'm not intending to bash you or anything, I just feel we are now forming precedents around AI works so I feel the need to comment on these. As I say, I really like the look of these assets, I have myself created a manually upscaled version of the icons you used as input, maybe you could try to use them to see what results they give.

@drummyfish:

I'm not sure you can claim copyright (CC-BY-SA) on something you've put no creative effort into though...

True, but I beleive there has been substantial transformation on this work. 

@emnh: 

Well I spent a whole day generating these images, so I wouldn't say it's trivial...

OGA curates trivial submissions, yes, but keep in mind that the amount of time and effort the submitter invests in the creation of an asset is irrelevant to determining if it is considered trivial. It is how much time and effort the asset saves the user of the asset that is important. If an average user can reproduce a comparable asset themselves in just a few minutes, then the asset isn't saving anyone any time. It's faster to just make their own rather than download it from here. 

That being said, I don't believe that is the case with these assets. As far as I know, the average user could not reproduce assets comparable to the above in just a few minutes. Furthermore, I can see a clear use-case for the asstes in a game.

@Commander:

..rest is for garbage in my opinion.

Not all assets on OGA are to the liking of everyone. Everyone is entitled to their own tastes and opinions, but don't be rude, please.

@drummyfish: 

...only humans can gain copyright and only through own work. I'm not intending to bash you or anything, I just feel we are now forming precedents around AI works...

I agree. Though, from my perspective, AI is not a non-human trying to create artworks, it is a tool used by a human artist. I have also heard the other end of the spectrum where artists try to claim it isn't real art unless you use an actual physical paint brush and canvas, eschewing all digital tools like photoshop. I have enforced the 'Trivial' rule on other IA-assisted submissions, but those were:

1. less curated by the submitter 
2. much smaller in volume of content

I feel like this is a significant set of assets, all of which are curated and manual work applied to them beyond a simple text prompt given to a GAN. Please let me know if anyone feels differently. This is new to everyone, including me.

-That garbage phrase is not rude in my way of thinking, it`s some kind of adult type expression to considerate that something is not in label. I`m today create 500+ sprites from various part and only two are really something, else is garbage, but I`m keeping them too, to exploit them on other opportunity of inspiration . So garbage and rude are not on the same page by me, and never will be, and everything is exploitable after additional patching, hehe...yes.

> AI is not a non-human trying to create artworks, it is a tool

@MedicineStorm this is a good point, in principle I agree and I don't even think we have to define tool as something similar to photoshop or whatever, it's just that even with a tool there has to be some creative work made by the human with the help of that tool. If you just give AI an image and say "make me something like this" the human has exorted zero creativity, i.e. there is nothing deserving copyright IMHO. My personal view on this is that I'm a bit disappointed as I believed AI could really help expand public domain, but people seem to be too culturally deformed now to think that any image that comes to existence has to be assigned an owner so we say an image that is generated automatically is assigned to ownership to the human who clicked the "generate" button. I don't think this kind of thinking is good for the future of free culture. But that's already offtopic, so I'll leave it at that :)

If you just give AI an image and say "make me something like this" the human has exorted zero creativity, i.e. there is nothing deserving copyright IMHO.

Yes, I understood this from your earlier comment. I absolutely agree. My subsequent reply was because that isn't what OP has done here. Typing some text and mashing "GO" was the first part, sure. But he then tweaked settings, curated out the less-than-stellar results, and made direct adjustments to the results. Similar to your own process on the Dungeon Crawl Selected Upscale submission, except the scaling algorithm here is Stable Diffusion.

I recognize you likely don't consider your Upscale submission as being deserving of copyright. That I don't have authority to govern. Per the licenses, it is allowed. This constitutes a legal derivative, as does yours. From there my only concern is if it should be on OGA. If it is as simple as you are talking about; "make me something like this", (not a statement of skepticism, I actually don't know.) then the average user can repeat the process and get similar results in just a few minutes. Thus, it must be considered a trivial submission. If anyone is willing to try that out, I will consider it in my decisions.

That being said, emnh, I think these would be received a lot better if they inherited the same license as the source content. It is your call, though.

Yes I amit I don't know in detail how the process works either, I briefly used some online services that worked just by uploading image. If your framwework works as you describe it, there seems to be some creative process here, so I guess this is okay.

AI or not. Those icons are awesome.

This AI debate gets rough wherever you go. I believe that AI will find it's place. I read an article on deviant art somewhere with regard to the inception of photography. Where it was initially the artist who drew portraits, landscapes and such. When people started calling photography art, artist were forced to exagerate aspects of their drawings and practically 'redefine' art. There was probably some frustration with regard to artists back in the day. And from their perspective as well as ours in terms of AI., its only a button press away from wonderful results.However, the intricacies of Photography to time to define in order for it took be "considered" art.

Photography now, IS ART.

IMO photography is a technological advacement and so is AI , I bet it took time for photography to find its 'place' in the art world and so will AI. The licencing thing though.. that's tricky. However, lets not be terribly mean.

Just FYI, If the cherry tree has unknown license conditions then it shouldn't be in the pack. If it is under CC-BY-SA, then you can't also have CC0 listed.

Also I don't know if it's important, but Balrog is trademarked (like Hobbit or Beholder). So you better rename Balrog into demon or something.

Edit: or may be not, according to different websites it was trademarked before, but now not, so I don't know really.

@VRS1 the situation with trademarks is extremely complicated, for example Wikimedia Commons just decides to ignore trademarks because it is impossible to tell if something is not violating a trademark considering even simple words, shapes or possibly even just colors can be trademarked somewhere in the world. A lot of free content clones -- e.g. that of Freedoom or OpenArena -- might very likely violate trademark (specificall trade dress) if they appeared as a product on the market, but such content is still allowed on many sites with free culture content because these sites usually only look at the copyright status. Trademark issues are left to be handled by any individual who takes such content to the market. I suppose it's similar here on OGA. With Balrog it seems to me it has become a kind of generic fantasy creature like a dwarf or an orc, it seems to me just using this name alone couldn't get anyone into any trouble, but your advice of renaming it is also good, it's always better to play it safe.

It's true it is impossible to be aware of every Intellectual Property (IP), so we don't always catch IP issues immediately. But when a trademark or copyright issue is found, it must be removed from OGA. It is the submitter's responsibility to check their content for IP problems before submitting, and remove them if any are found after submitting. emnh has already done so, but VRS1 is correct: Balrog is not a generic fantasy term.

Dwarf and Orc existed in various (public domain) cultural mythologies before Tolkien wrote LoTR, but Balrogs & Hobbits are creations of Tolkien and Beholders & Mind Flayers are creations of Gygax and you will not find such terms attached to any asset on OGA until their respecitve IP terms expire. Some of them may have already expired, but I haven't seen solid verification of this yet. If you know more about it, let me know. To the best of my knowledge, no formal DMCA's or C&D's have been issued over these terms, but I do know there have been games that received the worst kind of attention from giants like the Tolkien Estate and WotC and the terms were promptly removed from those games.

Reminds me of this guy..

I never knew what a balrog was before this guy came. Now I know. Sweet

That raises an excellent point, actually. Balrog the streetfighter is permitted despite the Tolkien Estate claim on "Balrog" because the Tolkien Balrog is significantly different, charactaristically, than the Streetfighter Balrog. 

Unfortuately, in the case above involved a giant flaming demon-like creature; definitely meeting the "substantial similarity" legal threshold of IP trouble when comparing it to Tolkien's Balrog.

EDIT: When I say that Balrog the streetfigher is "permitted", I mean he is permitted to coexist with a different brand, not that it is permitted on OGA. Fan art of Balrog the streetfighter wouldn't infringe on Tolkien's IP, but it would Capcom's.

I think that its because it is his name. I don't think anyone has the right to copywrite a name. More like an entire species. A Balrog is what IT is. Balrog is HIS actual name. Correct me if I am wrong? Not an expert. Just getting in on the good stuff here.

Single words or even short sentences cannot be copyrighted but they can be registered as a trademark, here we are talking about the trademark issue with Balrog.

Well, I'll be.. A google or two away presented me with this article.

https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Middle-earth_Enterprises/Copyrights

Turns out the trademark only protects the company, brand, slogans and such. However this does not stop the company, namely Middle-earth Enterprises (formerly Tolkien Enterprises) to claim copywrite on those phases. Turns out , Balrog is a phrase on that list.

Sheesh, seems i'v learned something today.

btw, you checked each and every image on that panel. Remarkable patience. You have your work cut out for you. I salute you!

I found that page too but it's probably wrong, people confuse the terms a lot and it also commonly happens that companies try to claim copyrights on anything even if they have no right to. It is better to look at the site of Middle-earth Enterprises itself where they say these names fall under trademark -- from https://www.middleearth.com/faq.html:

"To use any of those names (trademarks) as a business name without permission is unlawful."

If you don't believe me, official copyright office page states (https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-protect.html):

"Copyright does not protect names, titles, slogans, or short phrases."

Eaasy there big fella, Im reading and learning from this thread on the fly bro.

"Fictional characters can, under U.S. law, be protected separately from their underlying works. This is based on the legal theory of derivative copyrights. To obtain this type of protection, a creator must prove that the characters are sufficiently unique and distinctive to merit this protection."

 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUK... 

Dude, there is so much information about all this stuff and we keep going deeper and deeper. That page however is not 100% wrong considering the article above.

I have a feeling though that the context  within which these names are used plays a big role. Other than the fact that. eg. according to the site above "e. They are famous entities unto themselves, capable of launching franchise series." and also if the name bears the same characteristics and lends from the theme of the original works.

 
Tell me what you think.

Characters are copyrightable, but never their names alone, these can only be trademarked.

Yep. It gets a little cloudy between the two in these kind of circumstances, because the appearance of a character + name of a character + industry category = (usually) trademark...

But character name + description of character (like backstory and described appearance) + setting = (usually) copyright.

Some of both apply to the stuff we've been talking about. Tolkien's "Balrog" has a distinct description, backstory, a literary setting, and unique name (unique when tolkien first wrote it) so it fits with copyright.

But it also has a distinct appearance, characteristic name, and fits within several "fictional entertainment" industry categories so it fits with a trademark. The underlying take-away is that it had Intellectual Property implications, regardless of which subcategory of IP it belongs in.

If we're not talking about Balrogs as it related to these wonderful assets, but instead discussing the nuances and differences between copyright and trademark (regardless how how such differences relate to the submission above), then we have wandered off-topic. Such a discussion should continue, but it should probably continue on its own separate forum thread.

Agreed. Nice Chatting.

This submission has been marked as having a potential licensing issue. Hopefully, this is temporary. This does not mean the submitter has done anything wrong or that there is even a licensing issue at all, but there is a potential licensing issue. As mentioned previously in various places on OGA, we said

"...Until that broader discussion [of the legality of AI assisted artwork] progresses closer to some form of conclusion, we'll go with the general consensus. ... [the] general precedent [is currently] that it's fine. If that general consensus changes, so will the decision to host such assets on OGA."

The general consensus is changing now. Changing to what is not yet clear, but there are several ongoing US court cases involving exactly this topic. The court's decision on these cases will inform how OGA hosts assets created with the use of AI assistance. See https://opengameart.org/content/artificial-intelligence-assisted-artwork for more information.

This is NOT any sort of final determination or a permanent flagging of this submission. Regardless of the court's decisions about these tools, there are a lot of factors to take into consideration. Not all submissions will be handled the same way.