The Legal Battle Over AI Art

It was inevitable that many of the AI art generators out there would eventually be challenged legally for their use of copyright images in their training data. In the last few weeks we've seen 2 such lawsuits. One by a group of artists and another by Getty Images.

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[tomoudinarath]

The fact that Artists get bullied because they are concerned for their livelihood is insane! Visual artists have never gotten the respect they deserve. I’d like to see how music artists react when AI can make hit songs similar to there hits without their consent.

[leifareed]

As an aspiring artist, and sometimes commissioner of art, I tried using midjourney’s free trial to do some experiments, went to inform myself and see what would come out of it.
I had something pretty specific in mind, and it was my own character, and also something I would never use outside of my little experiment.

Safe to say that the results were terrible.
As long as you put general prompts without having a very specific idea of what you want, you can get very good looking images (that break down in details and hands tho) that uou can choose from, however when the thing you have in mind is specific and you want it to be done in a very specific way, the AI is unable (to my experience) to deliver.

From my point of view, I much prefer to commission an artist that has the style I prefer and I envision for the art I want, I know I can talk to them and provide all the references they’ll need, make sure they understood my needs completely and get the result I wish, instead of hoping that an AI does it (and maybe gives my character four hands or an extra finger on each finger…)

[TQWarrior]

I would definitely be down to hear you follow this as it continues to unfold

[NoirArt.]

The way this is treated by law is so damn disgusting. "they allow you to opt out in the future" so if I steal the gucci designs, it's their own fault because they didn't send me a specific message telling me I am not allowed to use their design

[thataverageguy]

Imagine that in the future there will be AI doing accounting, AI doing office work, AI doing data collection, AI driving taxis, planes and ships, AI that regulates air traffic, then millions of people will lose their jobs, it's time for me to buy land and start farming, If you think I'm paranoid guess what, my boss just fired me because he could save money by using AI instead of using an illustrator like me

[Cheapiebeepie]

Thank you for covering this. You put everything so well, and I agree with your sentiments. As an artist, I’ve lost almost all my motivation recently because of this. I even deleted my artstation (although it’s likely too late to avoid being scraped). I’m so disheartened by the future we’re pursuing and by the attitudes and behaviour of so many people. There will be a lot of regret in the future after the earth beneath creatives has been salted, and we stop producing the people who bring more colour to the world.

[yanamihailova]

Artists are having some very real and serious concerns about this and we get bullied for even voicing them. The whole system is build around trying to bypass artist’s decisions and preferences around how their work is to be used and yet people still think we are the ones that are unreasonable.
Honestly good points and thanks for bringing this up.However I just honestly completely lost my hope and trust in the public regarding this issue based on their response.

[cblackall]

Please continue your commentary on the impact of AI art. It's a valuable perspective from a working professional artist.

[StereotypeNerd]

I'd love for you to keep covering this! You manage to talk about the issue from a very objective standpoint while still maintaining a sense of heart that stands with artists. I didn't know much about the legal nitty gritty of this case but you managed to make it so accessible and clear. Great content and hope to see more!

[chickishot]

Please keep covering this! Imo AI shouldn’t be allowed to do what it’s doing without getting the consent of the artists first. I’ve seen artists get in trouble for having a similar work to another artist, AI shouldn’t be above this just because it’s computer generated. There are a LOT of artists that are angry about AI doing this…

[taufeeqagherdien]

The prospects of AI as a professional tool is fantastic.
I imagine an artist feeding their own art work into the training data set so they can produce their own work faster, or animators only needing to draw keyframes as in-betweens can be generated, or giving a colour reference sheet to the AI so it can add colour to black&white/grayscale images.

But AI as a tool for the general public is a tool that will be misused, and freelancer artists would be the most affected (if specific artists are used as prompts then its basically like tracing scandals' on roids). Another angle to see is stuff like ChatGTP is already screwing over written assignments in education

[WilliamHopperMusician]

From what I've heard and understand, AI doesn't "copy" the image. It learns from the images. I am a musician and songwriter. Everything I understand about music, all of the things I hear in my head are formed from music I've heard over my life time. My 'style' emerged from my experiences, listening, lessons I've taken, emotions, techniques and so on from a life time of music. Even the top artists that are concerned are incorporating the styles of others in their own works. Think not? What exactly were they taught in art school? What would a musician sound like if he'd never heard other musicians play? We all are familiar with the term 'influenced'. It is a common question in interviews. "Who was your biggest influence?" AI scrapes images to 'learn', then it takes a request for an image and produces one based on what it has 'learned' from other artists. The only way to not allow your art to 'influence' others is to not let them see it or hear it. If a painter likes something and thinks it is cool, do you think he/she will refrain from using that in a future work? AI is doing nothing more than learning from paintings and photos and such. We as humans learn every time we listen to a song or view a photo or painting. How would we write laws to prevent this? Good luck. AI just does it more in your face and obvious. You can't stop artists from seeing and using things in their own creations unless you remove them from public access. That sort of the defeats the purpose of art. AI while not human, is engaging in what we do and have done since the beginnings of civilization. The issue here is money.

[billlarocque]

Great. Civil. Instructive. Hopeful. Best perspective I've seen so far. Thanks, Brad.

[dness]

Imagine developers developing AI to write codes and then getting fired because of the AI they develo... Oh, wait, that just happened a few months ago. Ironic.

[alanzheng]

Sam has great points. if he doesn't want his stuff to be use then he should have the right. If they're using his work to generate new work... and if he consent to it, they should be paying him royalties for every piece used but that's not the case. These AI companies are making so much money generating stuff with ur name on it. Same with sampling music, should have royalties if a piece is used. Actors and actresses also have the right if they don't want their image to be used.

[xXxShankersxXx]

I think part of the toxic response comes from what non artists consider art, traditionally an artist makes a piece of work to be enjoyed by others and art tends to become public domain when it is not trademarked or copyrighted in modern times allowing the "free-use" term to be used for that specific art.

so when it comes to non artists who can then make something in the "style" of an artist they like or find interesting to then make a custom art for themselves is a form of admiration, however then the issue comes when people try to monotize it, in essence AI like this is meant to be a tool for both novices and professionals to allow them to create great art.

Artists have always had a hard time monotizing their works and this is a chance to change in both good and bad ways, there is going to be an adaption phase but I do see artists themselves being the ones to use AI the most in the end.

AI is just another tool in the toolbox and a professional will always make better work than a novice and AI makes mistakes and has limits, (yall seen them hands on AI Art?)

[mashotaarts]

You merge everything related to art in a very good way on this channel, and I love it. You perfectly combined "Informative" and "entertaining" and you release videos like a wizard (precisely when he means to). So yes please, keep this content coming

[jamespulver]

Personally I think this misunderstands copyright law, especially the Stephen King example. You can't copyright a style. There are plenty of replacements for Stephen King if you take the idea that a mystery / thriller / whatever == replacement. What you can't do is copy a character exactly or literally copy large parts of a book. But look at Comics - DC and Marvel have very close copies of each others superheros with a switched name and a different costume. The Atom / Ant-Man anyone?

Derivative doesn't mean "inspired by". Otherwise humans couldn't create anything "new" because it's all "derivative" of existing stuff. The AI training is only going to trigger copyright laws IMHO if they are actually storing copies of all the images. Remember that you create a copy of anything you view online so your computer can display it - this "viewing" of public pages is a carve out in copyright law. And lets not forget how minimal the changes have to be - see Richard Price and the instagram pic he copied and sold for $9, 000 and he won the copyright case.

I think the issue is all the artists are basically like the original luddites making reasonable moral and economic arguments, but not actual legal arguments as the law is currently written and interpreted. I also think it's a little crazy to hold the existence of toxic fans against a companies product. There are toxic movie fans, should we degrade how we think of the various movies?

[mehdio]

As a data professional for years, you nailed it! It not easy to translate such complex situation into simple words, well done!

[Mr.Beanyuwu]

People really out here telling artists that they should just sit and let corps and start ups just roll them over and steal from them is just baffling; people really BELIEVES that this tech will allow them to be artists themself w/o even putting any effort, instead of, you know, allow companies and CEOs to just standarise and flow the market with garbage content and media that will be absolutely bad and will degrade the entirety of out media landscape