All about Artificial intelligence
Has AI gone too far? Artists outraged by Generative Artificial Intelligence (Time.news) are waging a court and internet battle in defense of copyright in the United States: the technology copies in seconds techniques and artistic styles that they took years to develop.
The IAG controversy
Without human intervention, IAG creates new pieces of art from images of existing works, collected on the internet. Thus, she manages to imitate techniques and styles of artists.
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Furthermore, new works are made without the authors’ consent and without giving credit or compensation. The three Cs are the motto of the fight against appropriation.
Artists’ reaction
In January, artist Sarah Andersen and illustrator Karla Ortiz filed a collective action in a US federal court against the companies responsible for DreamUp, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, the IAG tools that create these arts.
For Agence France-Presse, Andersen claims to have felt “intimately wronged” when she saw a drawing imitating the style of her comic book, “Fangs”. Her indignation went viral on Twitter and other artists manifested themselves, reporting cases similar to hers.
It’s easy and cheap, so even institutions don’t think twice [em usar imagens geradas por IAG]although it is not ethical.
Sarah Andersen, designer
What Artists Want
- With a wide outpouring of artists against IAG, they hope to set a precedent against imagemakers;
- They also want the power to authorize or deny the tools’ use of their works;
- This could be done through a “licensing system”, as suggested by illustrator Karla Ortiz;
- If they authorize the use of the works, they want adequate compensation: not “receive cents while the company pockets millions”, said Ortiz, who has even worked for Marvel Studios.
Lawsuit
In the action and on social networks, the artists told stories of how IAG has already made them lose job opportunities.
- The Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, in the Netherlands, provoked controversy when it exhibited a piece created by IAG inspired by Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”, and used Midjourney for the publicity campaign for “The Nutcracker”, by the Ballet of San Francisco;
- In the action, they mentioned a video game developer, Jason Allen, who won the Colorado State Fair contest, in 2022, with art produced in the Midjourney tool. Allen responded to The New York Times that “art is dead” and “AI has won. The humans lost”;
- The three sued companies did not respond to Agence France-Presse;
- Emad Mostaque, head of Stability AI, which developed Stable Diffusion, described IAG as a tool that enables new ways of “idealizing” and allows more people to become artists; he argues that it’s not the problem of companies or the technology itself that people use it unethically;
- Neither artists nor IAG’s critics agree: technology doesn’t produce art, it just uses software created to copy an artistic style.
companies reaction
According to lawyer and developer Matthew Butterick, companies are likely to claim “fair use” (reasonable use), a type of clause that makes exceptions to copyright.
The magic word used in the US court system is ‘transformative’. Is this new use of the copyrighted work or does it replace the original on the market?
Matthew Butterick, attorney and developer
Last week, a team from the University of Chicago presented the Glaze software, which adds an extra layer of data to images. It is invisible to the human eye, but serves as bait for the IAG, according to the doctoral student in charge of the project, Shawn Shan.
However, the responsibility for adopting techniques to circumvent the tools would fall on the artists, which would cause an incessant “cat and mouse” effect.
With information from Agence France-Presse and Uol
Image: Midjourney by Nick Ellis/Olhar Digital
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