'Art is dead, my friend': Artificial intelligence 'steals' artists' drawings

Gallery illustration / Photo EPA-EFE/JALAL MORCHIDI

Several artists are outraged by artificial intelligence that copies in seconds the styles they have struggled to draw for years. A frenzy erupted in the art community last year with the announcement of generative artificial intelligence (AI) programs that can quickly execute commands like drawing in a way that would take an artist longer.

Such AI works are produced without the consent of the author and without notice of whose style is copied or compensation to the original artist. In January, artists including Sarah Andersen and Carla Ortiz filed a lawsuit against DreamApp, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion, three AI models for generating images based on artwork found on the internet.

Andersen told AFP that she felt "damaged" when she first saw the AI-drawn drawing, which copied the style of her comic strip "Teeth". She reacted angrily on Twitter and the comment went viral, prompting other outraged artists to reach out to her with their stories.

Supporters of the lawsuit hope to set a legal precedent that would regulate generative programs that copy artists' styles. Artists want AI creators to provide licenses to create works used in programs. They also demand adequate compensation.

The fee can be in the form of a license, Ortiz says, and should be appropriate. It would be wrong for artists to "get a few cents while the company gets millions" of dollars, added Ortiz, who worked at Marvel.

The lawsuit alleges that video game designer Jason Allen won the Colorado State Fair competition last year with "art" created using Midjourney.

“Art is dead, my friend. It's over. Artificial intelligence won. People lost," Allen told "The New York Times".

The Mauritius Museum in the Netherlands has sparked controversy by exhibiting an AI-generated painting inspired by Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring. The San Francisco Ballet, meanwhile, caused a stir by using Midjourney to create illustrations used in promotional material for December performances of The Nutcracker.

"It's a natural consequence of something that's simple, cheap and accessible," Andersen said. "Of course they will take that option, even if it is unethical," she added.

Companies defending against copyright infringement lawsuits by artists are likely to argue that this is "fair use," an exception that is sometimes allowed.

"The magic word used in the American judiciary is 'transformative,'" said attorney Matthew Butterick. "Is this a new use of the copyrighted work or is it replacing the original in the marketplace?"

Artists are turning not only to the courts, but also to technology to defend themselves against generative artificial intelligence. A team from the University of Chicago launched Glaze software last week to protect original works.

The program adds a layer of data over the images that, while invisible to the human eye, acts as a defense against artificial intelligence, said Sean Shan, the doctoral student in charge of the project. Butterick predicts a "game of cat and mouse" as AI developers devise ways to circumvent such defenses. Butterick also worries about the effect of artificial intelligence on the human spirit.

"When science fiction imagines an AI-driven apocalypse, it's sort of like robots coming over the hill with laser guns," he said. "I think the way AI defeats humanity is more that people just give up and don't want to create new things and (it) sucks the life out of humanity."

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