AI art needs to go
Why AI art generators are unethical
The Lensa app generates AI art, but at what cost_ Photo courtesy of Lensa app
February 1, 2023
By now, most of you have probably heard of AI art. Some of you have used AI art generators; heck, even I am guilty of trying it out. However, as this new and improving technology becomes more popular, it also brings up some questions.
As an artist myself, I wondered what AI-generated art means for the art community, and if it is ethical. After some digging, I am here to tell you that AI art is not as innocent as it seems.
There are two main issues with AI art. The first is that AI art generators are producing work faster and cheaper than actual artists, so artists are in danger of losing their jobs to this technology.
According to The New York Times, people have already begun to use AI art instead of hiring artists. They spoke with Mr. Waldoch, a young game designer, who did just that.
The NYT article said: “Initially, Mr. Waldoch planned to hire human artists through the gig-work platform Upwork to illustrate each day’s rhyming word pair. But when he saw the cost — between $50 and $60 per image, plus time for rounds of feedback and edits — he decided to try using A.I. instead.”
Waldoch plugged word pairs into Midjourney and DreamStudio, an app based on Stable Diffusion, and created what he needed in only a few minutes of time and costing only a few cents.
Now, AI stealing jobs is not a new problem. As technology continues to improve, many people are at risk of losing their jobs to AI. But it is much worse if the AI that is being credited and taking the jobs of artists, is also stealing the data from those artists in order to make its creations.
This brings me to the second issue: AI art generators are stealing from artists to produce images, essentially plagiarizing and profiting from it. How do we know that the AI is stealing from artists? Well, this is where the laws get complicated, and where the fight begins.
AI art generators cannot create original work. They have to be fed pre-existing images and artwork.
According to sciencealert.com, “when Stable Diffusion was being built, machine-learning algorithms were fed a large number of image-text pairs, and they taught themselves billions of different ways these images and captions could be connected. … it’s far from a streamlined process.”
At first, the companies that created these AI art generators argued that the AI learns from these images, but creates something new, just like an artist would. However, since AI art’s emergence, more and more proof has come out that AI is taking bits and pieces from artists’ work and directly incorporating it into the images.
According to Levelup.com, some artists have found bits and pieces of their work, and their signatures, in images concocted by AI generators.
One of the AI art generators, The Lensa app created by Prisma Labs, has generated portraits that seem “to have hints of artist signatures.” This has led to people suspecting that the AI is indeed taking many artists’ work without their consent.
AI art generators are stealing artists’ work to learn from it and profiting off of the images that they generate for little cost, and the artists whose work fed these machines get nothing. If that doesn’t sound wrong to you, I don’t know what will.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel though. Artists have begun to stand against these tech companies, and fight for their work.
According to news.artnet.com, “A group of artists has filed a class-action complaint against the companies behind a trio of A.I. art generators, saying the services violated copyright and unfair competition laws.”
In addition to the lawsuit, artists all over have begun talking about AI art and its impact. It may be tempting to use AI art, but now that you know the consequences, please consider supporting an actual artist instead. It may take a little longer, and cost a little more, but the result will be worth it.
Jane Wineberger • Apr 19, 2023 at 3:29 am
These “human artists” are just a bunch of whining weak Sissies. AI art will never be able to “replace” talented human artists. The broad public wants human artist, and this will never change. AI is not some kind of an almighty miracle worker. There’s still a lot AI isn’t as good in as a human. AI-art is just an addition to human art — not more. And Every artist gets “inspired” by the artworks of other artists, using these as models for his own art-productions. Every good human artist’s head is fed with tons of artworks of other artist to take his own inspiration from, as well as from what he sees all around him every day. That’s how creating art works, and with AI it’s not different. AI, of course, just like a human, needs models to base it’s own creations upon. Just when it comes to AI-art these Sissies call it “plagiarism” and “copyright infringement”, and cry tears about probably losing their jobs to the cheaper competition. Fact is just, even with all their whining lawsuits, they won’t be able to stop technological development from progressing, and instead of whining like little babies they should finally get in gears and show that they can do better than the AIs can do. Then they will always sell their works. AI-art may have an admirable level of perfection, but, seriously now, it’s truly not as if humans could not be the same perfect if not better. And it’s at last the “human factor” which will always make art made by humans be more desirable. But, yes, there’s a competition now: instead of trying to get rid of it the “mafia way”, show us that your better! And that all aside; in near future many new technological inventions will be in need if AIs which will be capable of creating artworks and designs. Humans are too slow, too imprecise, too inefficient. Instead of crying about it, grow adult and learn how to live and deal with it.