- OpenAI, an Elon Musk-founded company, recently made its DALLE image generator available to the public.
- Artists claim they spend years building their portfolios. People can now create copycat images in seconds, according to artists.
- AI companies claim that these new artworks can be copied and reproduced.
Greg Rutkowski is an artist of distinctive style. He’s best known for creating fantasy scenes with dragons and epic battles, which fantasy games like Dungeons and Dragons use.
He stated that it was “really rare” to find a style similar to his on the internet.
Yet if you search for his name on Twitter, you’ll see plenty of images in his exact style — that he didn’t make.
Rutkowski, despite having never used AI technology, has been a popular name in AI art.
AI-image generators are used to create thousands of original artworks. These programs use artificial intelligence to generate original artwork within minutes or seconds.
Rutkowski’s name was This was used to create around 93,000 AI photos on one image generator, Stable Diffusion — making him a far more popular search term than Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Vincent van Gogh in the program.
Rutkowski, a Polish resident, said that he feels like there’s something going on that he can’t control. “My name, as well as the names of other artists, is being used a lot for creating AI images.”
Greg Rutkowski
Stable Diffusion
AI-image generators generate images that are unique and not just a collection of stock images.
A user simply typed words that describe what they would like to see (also known as prompts) into a search bar. It’s similar to searching Google Images except that the search results are brand-new artworks created by the text in the user’s search terms.
To create something similar to an artist’s style, one of the most common prompts to use is the name of the artist.
Rutkowski stated, “People are pretending that they’re me.” Rutkowski said, “I’m very concerned about this; it seems unethical.”
Simon Stålenhag, an artist and designer based in Sweden, told Insider that although he isn’t against AI-generated art in principle, he does take issue with how some people are using the new technology.
He said that people are selling AI-made prints with my name on them. “Something like — ‘Rusty Robot in a field in the style of Simon Stålenhag’ — which is a super aggressive way of using this technology.”
He has seen people become hostile to him when they post an AI image of himself on social media. “People have tagged and said that they are gonna make my job lose me or something similar, they’re really aggressive and harsh,” he stated.
He believes AI-image generation is “not in artists’ hands right now.” It’s in the hands and control of early adopters.
Rutkowski, who uses both digital tools and classic oil on canvas for his work, is worried that this explosion in imitation art means his style — which has seen him land deals with Sony and Ubisoft — might lose its value.
Rutkowski explained that they spend years building their portfolio. “Suddenly someone can create tons images with these generators, and sign them with their name.”
He stated that the generators are currently being commercialized so you don’t know what the final output of your name over the years.
“Maybe you’ll be excluded from the market because there will be so many artworks of that style that yours won’t be interesting anymore.
The rise of imitation
AI-image generators are becoming more popular among consumers.
OpenAI was founded by Elon Musk in 2015. DALL-E image generatorThe public is invited to attend the September open house. Before lifting the waitlist Open AI declared the programMore than 1.5 million people were already registered.
Liz DiFiore is the president of The Graphic Artist Guild. This organization supports illustrators, designers, and photographers throughout the US. She said that AI’s ability to copy styles easily could lead to financial problems for artists.
She stated that artists are devoted to their work and can make a lot from being able and able to license images.
“So if an artificial intelligence copies the style of an artist, and a company can simply get an image that’s similar in style to that of a popular artist without actually going to artists to compensate them for their work, this could become a problem.”
US copyright law only protects artists against the reproduction of their actual artworks — not from someone else mimicking their style.
Some of the most popular AI image generators — which include DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion — have policies in place to prevent consumers from using their products in certain ways. OpenAI, for instance, is a great example. Images of celebrities are not allowedOr politicians.
These programs filter things such as nudity to prevent users creating “harmful contents”. Gore.
Insider asked Midjourney and DALL-E representatives if they had any measures in place to ensure that images are not created in a manner similar to working artists.
Stable Diffusion representatives said that the company was developing an opt-out system to allow artists who do not want AI programs to train on their work.
A spokesperson said that the artist’s name is only one of many components of an AI model’s instructions that creates a style unique to each artist.
Open AI representatives didn’t specify any measures to protect living artists, but stated that they would seek the views of artists as it expands DALL-E access.
Insider asked Midjourney questions that she didn’t answer.
AI data training
AI-image generators “train”, by using large sets of images, captions, and other data. Open AI representatives said that DALL-E uses both publically available data and images licensed from the company.
Representatives from Stable Diffusion stated that the program uses web crawls in order to collect information and images.
Rutkowski believes that living artists should not have been included in the databases that train generators.
“I don’t think the AI is bad overall. I think it’s an excellent technology. He said that he thought they should have removed artists’ names.
RJ Palmer is another designer and illustrator. Do not use the hyphenGenerators were actively anti-artists on Twitter because he claimed they were “explicitly training on current working artists.”
Artists can verify if their work was used to train AI programs via a website called “Have I Been Trained”, which Mat Dryhurst, a German sound artist, and Holly Herndon, an American sound artist, created.
They have been developing tools that artists can use to opt-out from AI-training sets. The website scans through 5.8 million images from the Midjourney and Stable Diffusion data sets to help them train their programs.
Some artists believe they should have given their consent for their images and data to be used in training AI generators.
Stålenhag said it would have been nice to be asked if he could be included in the training data, but said it was an inevitable consequence of putting art on the internet.
Insider said he saw it as being very similar.
He said that “we do copy other people’s ideas, styles, and designs and we take it,” but added that AI art is not a threat at the moment.
He said that there is a lot of hype surrounding AI, which I find strange because I don’t believe it’s very useful. “I don’t see it as an issue because the visuals aren’t as good as what artists can make.”
Copyright laws for AI images are murky
It’s not clear whether copyright laws would protect new artwork created by AI programs.
DiFiore stated that “copyright issues around AI are probably one of our biggest areas that we’re focused on”, adding that it is still a “very gray area.”
Getty Images is one example of a stock-image library. We have been refusedAI-generated artwork is not permitted to be sold due to uncertainty regarding copyright and commercial use
Insider was told by a spokesperson from the US Copyright Office that works created only using artificial intelligence lack the human authorship required to support a copyright claim.
They stated that the office would not “knowingly grant registration for a work that was claimed only to have been created by machine with artificial intelligence.”
However, it is not clear whether someone entering search prompts into an AI program to create an AI artwork counts towards a human/AI collaboration.
Representatives of Open AI stated that they believe images created by their programs could be copied for commercial purposes.
Open AI spokesperson said that images can be copied if DALL-E is being used to assist human creativity. DALL-E users are entitled to distribute and commercially exploit the images they create, provided they adhere to our content policy.
They also stated that the copyright law had adapted to new technology in past and would need to do so with AI-generated content.
Many artists are excited by the potential of this technology, despite their reservations.
Giles Christopher, a London-based commercial photography specialist in food and drinks, uses DALLE and other AI image generators to experiment and create artificial backgrounds for some commercial shots.
He said, “I have images that you wouldn’t doubt are photographs.” “Some photographers have said that my images look too good,” he added.
He believes that AI is not a magic bullet and that artists need to look for ways to incorporate it into their work.
He said, “I have friends within the industry who would storm out of the conference room if I bring up AI.”
But he is keeping his mind open. “I am still on the fence. Christopher stated, “It’s like keeping your enemy close.”
