Visual artists fight back against AI companies for repurposing their work::Three visual artists are suing artificial intelligence image-generators to protect their copyrights and careers.
Resistance is futile
Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Visual artists fight back against AI companies for repurposing their work::Three visual artists are suing artificial intelligence image-generators to protect their copyrights and careers.
Resistance is futile
This is the best summary I could come up with:
NEW YORK (AP) — Kelly McKernan’s acrylic and watercolor paintings are bold and vibrant, often featuring feminine figures rendered in bright greens, blues, pinks and purples.
The Nashville-based McKernan, 37, who creates both fine art and digital illustrations, soon learned that companies were feeding artwork into AI systems used to “train” image-generators — something that once sounded like a weird sci-fi movie but now threatens the livelihood of artists worldwide.
The lawsuit may serve as an early bellwether of how hard it will be for all kinds of creators — Hollywood actors, novelists, musicians and computer programmers — to stop AI developers from profiting off what humans have made.
The case was filed in January by McKernan and fellow artists Karla Ortiz and Sarah Andersen, on behalf of others like them, against Stability AI, the London-based maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion.
The teacher, Christoph Schuhmann, said he has no regrets about the nonprofit project, which is not a defendant in the lawsuit and has largely escaped copyright challenges by creating an index of links to publicly accessible images without storing them.
The idea that such a development is inevitable — that it is, essentially, the future — was at the heart of a U.S. Senate hearing in July in which Ben Brooks, head of public policy for Stability AI, acknowledged that artists are not paid for their images.
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FireTower@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It seems pretty obvious to me that the artists should win this assuming their images weren’t poorly licenced. Training AI is absolutely a commercial use.
These companies adopted a run fast and don’t look back legal strategy and now they’re going to enter the ‘find out’ phase.
kava@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t think it’s obvious at all. Both legally speaking - there is no consensus around this issue - and ethically speaking because AIs fundamentally function the same way humans do.
We take in input, some of which is bound to be copyrighted work, and we mesh them all together to create new things. This is essentially how art works. Someone’s “style” cannot be copyrighted, only specific works.
The government announced an inquiry recently into the copyright questions surrounding AI. They are going to make recommendations to congress about potential legislation, if any, they think would be a good idea. I believe there’s a period of public comment until mid October, if anyone wants to write a comment.
MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
I really hope you’re wrong.
And I think there’s a difference. Humans can draw stuff, build structures, and make tools, in a way that improves upon the previous iteration. Each artists adds something, or combines things in a way that makes for something greater.
AI art, literally cannot do anything, without human training data. It can’t take a previous result, be inspired by it, and make it better.
AI art has NEVER made me feel like it’s greater than the sum of its parts. Unlike art made by humans, which makes me feel that way all the time.
Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
This is a pretty old story, the EFF already weighed in on it back in april.
GFGJewbacca@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I would like to agree with you, but I have doubts this lawsuit will stick because of how prominent corporations are in US law.
joe@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There’s nothing in copyright law that covers this scenario, so anyone that says it’s “obviously” one way or the other is telling you an opinion, not a fact.
random_character_a@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a tough one, because they are not directly making money from the copyrighted material.
Isn’t this a bit same as using short samples of somebodys song in your own song or somebody getting inspired from somebodys artwork and creating something similar.
FireTower@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If you’re sampling music you aught to be compensating the licence holder unless it’s public domain or your work is under a fair use exception.