Are there any appeals for artists who are angry about the unauthorized use of their work by artificial intelligence?

Many artists are angry. And for good reason: several programs that create visuals and portraits using artificial intelligence have used it a lot in their work to learn how to respond to user requests. If it is currently difficult to find a legal remedy for them, it will soon be possible to take action to delete the creations of some of these AIs from the database.

“ It feels frustrating and a violation “, announced artist Kim Leutwyler in a recent Guardian article. ” We do not receive compensation, so we do not take credit “. This craze, which we highlighted in an article in December, is mainly due to the Lensa application, which has gained strong popularity for several months.

The latter is based on Stable Diffusion artificial intelligence, which is capable of “learning” to generate images that match the image entered by the user. In short, tell the AI ​​what you want to capture to get a low-cost visual. A possibility that does not appeal to many users: “ It’s easy to see why apps like Lensa have captured the imagination of millions of users. Lensa produced portraits come in a variety of bright styles that are quite appealing to the uncritical eye. At just $7.99 each for a set of 50 images, many have found Lensa to be the perfect way to create a social media profile picture at a fraction of the cost. “, the media wrote on this topic in December Futuristic.

Source of images used by Stable Diffusion to perfect the study of shoelaces. Indeed, what is called artificial intelligence today is often an “artificial neural network.” Specifically, it is a system inspired by the activity of biological neurons that later approaches statistical methods. In summary, artificial intelligence is “fed” by large amounts of data. Extracts logical relationships and processes them for output. Here, the AI ​​needs to be fed images to learn to generate new images based on the suggested query.

To provide the artificial intelligence with enough images, its creators relied on a database called LAION-5B. However, this work uses works from many platforms provided by artists such as Deviant Art, Art Station, Getty Images… If these are not “copied” in the same way, certain styles are widely recognized in the images provided by Lensa. However, the artists concerned have yet to find any legal recourse.

Unprecedented legal situation

And for good reason: ” [Ces outils fonctionnent] in the same way, a person can learn and train himself in certain elementary artistic principles by observing art, exploring online images, and learning from artists, and eventually tries to create something based on these accumulated skills. “The spokesperson of the company defends this issue. Indeed, if a work of art is indeed protected, it is not the general style used to create the work, particularly under American law.

Art is a journey, not a midjourney.#SkillsNotTalents #HumanArtists pic.twitter.com/ybE7vX6Fme

—Romy | OPEN COMMITTEES (@Romanohide) December 13, 2022

The fact is that the scenario is completely new, because a machine does not “learn” like a human. ” Art is a journey, not a midjourney “, thus ironically French artist Romanohide symbolically posts one of his first and last works side by side on Twitter. The situation therefore seems unfair to many artists and may constitute a new area of ​​legal investigation. At this time and recently, artists still have appeals. On December 15th, Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, announced on Twitter that version 3.0 of its AI will allow artists who want to extract their artwork from a learning database.

Choose, of course, about 50:50 both ways.

Technically it’s tags for LAION and links around it.

It’s actually quite difficult due to the size (eg what if your image is on a news site?)

Attribution etc. We welcome constructive input to explore other mechanisms. https://t.co/uYvN4yHldo

— Emad (@EMostaque) December 14, 2022

Spawning, an organization created last year to allow you to check whether their creations are actually integrated there, provides a website that allows this control: haveibeentrained.com. Therefore, it is “enough” for artists to check and, if necessary, ask Stability AI to withdraw their creations. This measure is not enough for many Internet users, who have mixed reactions to the news. ” Consent will never be respected until it is based solely on voluntary additions. (…) All this is a mess and needs to be ethically scratched and rebuilt “That sums up a certain Justin Wieier on YouTube.

An explanatory video of ovulation: