Artists launch copyright lawsuit against AI art generators Stable Diffusion and Midjourney

[midian182]

What just happened? In addition to concerns about AI-generated content taking human jobs, it seems there are also questions regarding the material these tools are trained on. In the case of the art-creating systems Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, their developers are being sued alongside portfolio site DeviantArt by three artists for allegedly violating copyright laws.

AI-powered content-generating tools have seen their popularity explode in recent months, but it hasn't stopped the controversy that surrounds them. That's been especially true of systems that create art. The problem was highlighted last September when the Colorado State Fair's contest for emerging digital artists was by Jason M. Allen, who created his entry using Midjourney.

Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are trained on billions of images. In the case of the latter, it uses selected datasets from the LAION-5B project, a collection of 5 billion images and associated descriptive captions created by a German-based research non-profit. The scraping is usually done without the artists' consent and can be used to imitate their art style. Now, three artists—Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz—say this is a violation of several copyright laws.

words of David Holz (midjourney founder), from forbes article (link below): pic.twitter.com/rnWP28rrag

— Maciej Kuciara (@maciej_kuciara) December 20, 2022

The trio have launched a class action on behalf of all artists affected and are "seeking compensation for damages caused by Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, and an injunction to prevent future harms."

"The lawsuit alleges direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement related to forgeries, violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), violation of class members' rights of publicity, breach of contract related to the DeviantArt Terms of Service, and various violations of California's unfair competition laws."

Lawyer and typographer Matthew Butterick, who filed the case alongside antitrust and class action specialist Joseph Saveri Law Firm, writes that many people, especially writers, artists, programmers, and other creators, are concerned about AI systems being trained on copyrighted work with no consent, credit, or compensation. He adds that the latest case is a step toward making AI fair and ethical for everyone.

Butterick and Saveri are also currently suing Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI in a similar case revolving around the AI programming model CoPilot.

As noted by The Verge, the question of whether AIs being trained on swathes of content violates copyright laws is a complicated one. Their creators argue that it falls under the fair use policy in the US, but that will likely need to be proved in the courts.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97276-artists-launch-copyright-lawsuit-against-ai-art-generators.html

 

[FaTaL]

AI will be the downfall of civilization

 

[dangh]

How the hell does that makes sense?
Any real artist looks at other arts - Picasso, Monet, whatever, and he finds inspiration in those works, often using them, or some ideas taken from it, in their own work.
Each artists 'trains' on billions of images. It is enough to go out for a walk. It is not surprising that AI would be trained on any number of works as well and in no way does that infringe any copyrights.
This shows even more that re-defining of copyright law is needed more than ever.

 

[BadThad]

Looks like a starving artist money grab. As long as the exact same images are not used, it's not a violation.

 

[Nicromancer]

Its like suing a gun maker for the consequence of school shooting. I don't see how this will work.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"Another step toward mak­ing AI fair & eth­I­cal for every­one"

REEEE NO YOU CANT USE AI TO MAKE ART YOU CAN ONLY GET POORLY MADE ART FROM USSSSS11111111

AI: "haha art go brrrrrrrrrrrr

Looks like a starving artist money grab. As long as the exact same images are not used, it's not a violation.

That's exactly what it is. The artists behind this are absolutely arse blasted that nobody is commissioning them for art anymore because AI does a better job, for free.

 

[m4a4]

Yeah, copyright only applies to the exact work (or derivatives that don't change it much), not works that are transformative (which most AI art is).
I mean, anyone with a little bit of logic (and those who didn't jump on the bandwagon) should be able to see that.

And as others have pointed out, training on copyrighted works is what humans already do. Just because you are aware of the process now (and how short it is for AI) doesn't change that.

 

[tellmewhy]

Some people don't understand that all humans are copies of the same DNA and insist on suing other people for appropriating their style or “likely". So how did they learn to paint? Were they born knowing how to paint? Didn't they learn by looking at someone else s?

If someone for example is a taxi driver it's normal for them to not like autopilot driving because it's a competitor and drives down prices. But if he tries to destroy autopilot to protect his private interests then you are not only against the software, you are against all of humanity that wants to have easier transportation.

There are 1 million painters worldwide and to protect their interests they go against the interests of 10 billion people. Well no, 1 million is not more important than 10 billion. All jobs will eventually be replaced to some extent by machines, that doesn't mean we will prevent automation and stay in the age of the plow and the Luddites.

Copyright exist to promote the science and useful arts, in it’s core it’s about freedom of expression not about ownership. IF the neural networks become illegal we will lose even the auto translation, we will become a modern tower of Babel.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Photography put artists focused on realism out of business. And gave us Impressionists and Cubists and all manner of new art forms. Time for artists to change with the times again.

 

[yannus]

The problem is not AI, the problem is who owns the AI. The same can be said about any topic.

 

[toooooot]

I commented just about this issue. These systems can only make thise works/images because they sucked pretty much everything someone, human, made.
Next, somebody would purchase this soft and without payign any one of these artists will generate and sell content which in a way came from the work of those artists. It is unfair, especially to small artists. I understand that some people who make these programs are also not rich sometimes (exluding Nvidia).
I welcome this fight. Best wishes to them.

 

[brucek]

Human artists are not paying off all the past artists who produced all the past works they've ever seen, I don't see why AI artists should either.

The broader point about US copyright is that too often people forget it's stated purpose from the US constitution was supposed to be a compromise from the start: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times..."

It was never meant to be an eternal property right that could be used to hold back the progress of all citizens so say the fourth grandchild could continue to demand royalties from all humankind in perpetuity. It's supposed to be a reasonable balance that ensures humankind keeps moving forward, with the long term prosperity accruing to everyone, while ensuring enough motivation and payoff to make it economically possible for the original creator to create.

 

[Holocrumb]

Its like suing a gun maker for the consequence of school shooting. I don't see how this will work.

No. Completely different legal theories. In suing the gun maker, you're suing someone who is making the product used to kill innocent kids, and you're probably claiming some form of negligence. In the copyright case, nobody is getting killed, and the maker of the product is suing the person using the product under one or more theories of intentional violation of copyright. Very different from negligence and tort law. Very different results. It would be more like the gun maker suing the person who commits the school shooting. Your analogy makes no sense.

 

[Holocrumb]

I commented just about this issue. These systems can only make thise works/images because they sucked pretty much everything someone, human, made.
Next, somebody would purchase this soft and without payign any one of these artists will generate and sell content which in a way came from the work of those artists. It is unfair, especially to small artists. I understand that some people who make these programs are also not rich sometimes (exluding Nvidia).
I welcome this fight. Best wishes to them.

If I go to art school and study Picasso and Braque, then create a cubist work and sell it for $100,000, is that unfair to the estates of Picasso and Braque? Suppose I go to a local art fair and I'm impressed by the artists who do landscapes, and thinking of them, I produce a landscape of my own and sell it. Is that unfair to the local artists? It will be extremely difficult for a court to find fault in the AI case if the AI art is not a clear copy or is not a derivative work of the human-made art. A derivative work is a work that includes major copyrightable elements of an original. A court will require a plaintiff to point to specific elements and compare them, side by side, with the corresponding elements of the original work. Unless a plaintiff artist is able to point to specific elements with particularity, general arguments about "fairness" and "small artists" will not prevail.

 

[Thanthan]

How the hell does that makes sense?
Any real artist looks at other arts - Picasso, Monet, whatever, and he finds inspiration in those works, often using them, or some ideas taken from it, in their own work.
Each artists 'trains' on billions of images. It is enough to go out for a walk. It is not surprising that AI would be trained on any number of works as well and in no way does that infringe any copyrights.
This shows even more that re-defining of copyright law is needed more than ever.

Not a direct parallel. It’s more like if someone studied your exact style for fifty years, then turned around and said ‘I’ll do commissions in this guys exact style for free’. Unlike other humans learning from another artist, there is a much more direct potential for loss of income. The ML model also imitates artists much more directly than humans typically would. It has no imagination of its own to contribute, it is just finding patterns it has seen before.

 

[VitalyT]

Art in its traditional form is about to go extinct. Very soon, music and songs will also be AI-generated.

Links:

- https://soundraw.io/
- https://openai.com/blog/jukebox/

 

[Nicromancer]

No. Completely different legal theories. In suing the gun maker, you're suing someone who is making the product used to kill innocent kids, and you're probably claiming some form of negligence. In the copyright case, nobody is getting killed, and the maker of the product is suing the person using the product under one or more theories of intentional violation of copyright. Very different from negligence and tort law. Very different results. It would be more like the gun maker suing the person who commits the school shooting. Your analogy makes no sense.

I am trying to say suing the AI developers doesn't make sense because how the AI is used is determined by the final users just like guns can be used for school shooting or hunting. It is up to the final users and they should be the one held responsibility not the tool makers. Just like people can sue and take down BitTorrent site owners but sue the developers of BitTorrent won't work.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

I can't see this standing up in court. They are training AI to produce art, they aren't training it to copy prior work. If the Ai continually produced images that were uncannily similar to Deviant's Artwork they might have a case, but is not the case. This reminds me of the crap about taking photos in public and people whinging their face was in a photo because they were standing next to a fountain and try to sue.

 

[Endymio]

AI will be the downfall of civilization

People said the same thing about the invention of the internal combustion engine.

 

[Endymio]

People said the same thing about the invention of the internal combustion engine. Several nations nearly banned the device entirely.

 

[poltevo]

Human artists are not paying off all the past artists who produced all the past works they've ever seen, I don't see why AI artists should either.

The broader point about US copyright is that too often people forget it's stated purpose from the US constitution was supposed to be a compromise from the start: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times..."

It was never meant to be an eternal property right that could be used to hold back the progress of all citizens so say the fourth grandchild could continue to demand royalties from all humankind in perpetuity. It's supposed to be a reasonable balance that ensures humankind keeps moving forward, with the long term prosperity accruing to everyone, while ensuring enough motivation and payoff to make it economically possible for the original creator to create.

The current situation is causing harm to artists. The fact is artists will lose out to cheap immitations, meaning they might as well stop producing original work. Why do it? Whats the incentive? There needs to be a balance of interests here otherwise artists will no longer be able to spend time creating new work.

Interestingly you do mention balance, but have provided no balanced solution for this situation. None of these artists are demanding eternal property rights, but there needs to be due considerations for their valuable contributions. The likes of Midjourney don't care: they will hoover up everyones work in order to sell their cloud services.

 

[poltevo]

I can't see this standing up in court. They are training AI to produce art, they aren't training it to copy prior work. If the Ai continually produced images that were uncannily similar to Deviant's Artwork they might have a case, but is not the case. This reminds me of the crap about taking photos in public and people whinging their face was in a photo because they were standing next to a fountain and try to sue.

They are trained to do both. You can prompt these models to produce "in the style of x".

 

[Endymio]

The current situation is causing harm to artists. The fact is artists will lose out to cheap immitations, meaning they might as well stop producing original work. Why do it? Whats the incentive?

There are countless Chinese artists on the Internet, selling hand-painted cheap knockoffs of classic artworks. Why are those copies worth so little, when the originals are worth tens of millions? Because they're cheap knockoffs.

Artists that produce new, original, creative work will still thrive. Your argument is like claiming we should ban factory-produced clothing, because why would anyone ever hand-knit an artisan sweater, when a machine can do it 100X faster, at 1% the cost?

 

[poltevo]

There are countless Chinese artists on the Internet, selling hand-painted cheap knockoffs of classic artworks. Why are those copies worth so little, when the originals are worth tens of millions? Because they're cheap knockoffs.

Artists that produce new, original, creative work will still thrive. Your argument is like claiming we should ban factory-produced clothing, because why would anyone ever hand-knit an artisan sweater, when a machine can do it 100X faster, at 1% the cost?

Why would they thrive? Their work can be easily copied at basically no cost. You might get a few celebrity artists making money, but most won't be so lucky.

Cheap physical knock offs are materially different from high quality goods. Artisan clothes can't be mass produced, because they are too intricate or bespoke or made of quality material to made cheaply. Its still worthwhile for someone to spend time doing it. These arn't comparable situations.

A better question is why should an artist spend 100s of hours producing something original, when their style can be immediately copied. They get very little or nothing back. What will happen is most people or companies will choose their favourite style and pay a small fee (or nothing at all) to re-create it with Stable Diffusion.

Ironically, artists who use these tools to create new original work are just as likely to get it copied.

What we need is a balanced way of using these tools, rather then completely ignoring the people that - you know - actually put the time and effort in.

 

[m4a4]

Why would they thrive? Their work can be easily copied at basically no cost. You might get a few celebrity artists making money, but most won't be so lucky.

Cheap physical knock offs are materially different from high quality goods. Artisan clothes can't be mass produced, because they are too intricate or bespoke or made of quality material to made cheaply. Its still worthwhile for someone to spend time doing it. These arn't comparable situations.

A better question is why should an artist spend 100s of hours producing something original, when their style can be immediately copied. They get very little or nothing back. What will happen is most people or companies will choose their favourite style and pay a small fee (or nothing at all) to re-create it with Stable Diffusion.

Ironically, artists who use these tools to create new original work are just as likely to get it copied.

What we need is a balanced way of using these tools, rather then completely ignoring the people that - you know - actually put the time and effort in.

Then they just need to adapt. Remember when computer was in reference to a person, not a machine?

Lets not pretend that no one in the past has lost their jobs to a better process.