AI-generated art has been becoming more and more popular as of late, and it's been the source of countless artists' concerns since it might put them out of business. Three artists have decided to step up and filed a class action suit believing that AI art tools have finally crossed the line.
Artists vs. Machines
The artists in question are Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz. Andersen is behind "Sarah's Scribbles," McKernan makes illustrations for comic books and games, and Ortiz is a concept artist who has done work for Marvel Film Studios.
The group filed a lawsuit against artificial intelligence art generators like Stability AI, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and DreamUp, which is a new AI art generator launched by the art-centric social networking site DeviantArt.
The artists claimed that the companies used billions of internet images to train their AI including the works of those who filed the lawsuit, according to Polygon, and they did so without the consent and compensation of the artists.
For instance, Stable Diffusion trained using LAION-5B, which holds 5.85 billion text-images which are from sources like Flickr, DeviantArt, Wikimedia, and Pinterest. DeviantArt and Pinterest alone are majorly made up of artworks from individual artists.
They also added that the companies benefit and profit from the use of copyrighted images and that the harm it brought to artists was no longer hypothetical. AI generators have already sold works online, taking away commissions from artists who create art with hard work.
Attorney Matthew Butterick is in the corner of the artists and filed the suit. Butterick works with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm based in California. The plaintiffs want a jury trial and are seeking unspecified damages, reports say.
The lawsuit may prove to be difficult, seeing as this area of copyright is fairly new to the law. The companies behind the AI generators may be protected by the fair use doctrine, making it difficult to determine whether or not the AI artworks are derivative of the images it was based on.
Stable AI does believe that it falls under fair use. The company's spokesperson expressed that they take the matters seriously. They also stated that anyone who believes that it wasn't fair use does not understand technology and the law.
Not the First Instance
This wasn't the first time that AI-generated art caught the ire of artists and the public. Back in September 2022, an artwork made using Midjourney won the Colorado State Fair art competition under the digital art category.
Created by Jason Allen from Pueblo West, "Théâtre D'opéra Spatial" was the first artwork created using artificial intelligence to win the contest. Artists have accused him of cheating and faced backlash from artists and others online.
Allen said in defense that he did not hide the fact that he used AI since it was submitted under "Jason M. Allen via Midjourney." He believes that he did not break any rules and will not apologize for them, as mentioned in The New York Times.
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