The rise in popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to the realization that it is capable of generating music, art and even school papers without much human aid, raising concern among artists over the value of their work.
AI-generated art is hurting freelance independent artists. Many of them rely on commissions, but now with online accounts able to create AI-generated works and pass it off as something done by them, it damages the credibility of other artists.
The Copyright Act of 1976 allows copyright ownership of artistic works. It grants exclusive rights to reproduce and adapt their works, but what do you do if the owner is a machine?
Since these machines are AI-based technology there are little regulations put in place. Which means the amount of protection artists have for their work is very little, leaving it vulnerable to AI companies to essentially steal without repercussions.
AI is in short a system of written algorithms that try to generate new images in relevance to the aesthetic that it has been taught through what are called Generative Adversarial Networks(GAN).
Due to the Large-Scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network(LAION) and systems like DALLE or Stable Diffusion, these AI are able to scrape for publicly available images from sites like Deviant Art, Pinterest, and Getty Images. Companies can then use these images in their algorithms to create AI-generated art.
An example of a company in question would be Lensa-Prisma Labs. They use artificial intelligence to duplicate photos in different styles of artwork. Lensa uses Stable Diffusion and text-to-image model AI for the app.
The problem with AI-generated art is it uses many works from other artists without their consent or even compensation. This hurts the business of freelance independent artists, and devalues work created by humans.
The art industry is underappreciated because it does not seem as essential as engineering or accounting, but we consume art everyday in multiple different forms.
For the high amount of entertainment we consume at such a fast demand we should be fairly compensating the work that goes into it and crediting the artists that make it.
Artists have now become hesitant to post their works online due to AI scraping. This can be detrimental to a freelancer’s business because social media platforms are a way for artists to find new commissions, projects, make connections and engage with their audience.
AI-generated art devalues the work done by humans. It promotes the idea that companies can switch to AI and pay little for creative labor but still make the most money in the shortest amount of time instead of appropriately paying the artist for their time and labor.
Many solutions have been suggested in regards to copyright concerns. Some have pushed for federal statutory private protections where users can protect their images from the platforms.
Getty Images, who is suing Stability AI over alleged copyright violations of millions of copyrighted images from the site, is an example of corporations taking action against AI.
Others have prompted legislators to pursue a broad licensing scheme for underlying works.
The University of Chicago SAND Lab and members of the professional artist community, notably Karla Ortiz, created Glaze, a program which generates a cloaked version for each image you want to protect. The app is solely for research purposes, with the goal of protecting artists.
Some limitations to the app is that changes made by Glaze are more visible on art with flat colors and smooth backgrounds. While it is not a permanent solution to AI mimicry, it is a necessary first step in the field of artist protection tools.