Effect on Artists

Artists are not against AI.

In fact, the majority of artists are welcome to the concept. AI can be a wonderful resource to get complex ideas into a visual interpretation and can help organize and design concepts to build upon.

However, that does not mean that is the end of the story.

It is the way that companies and individuals are using the resource of AI art along with how the companies involved in the delvelopment are handleing the training. As a result many artists are expressing their dislike towards the technology as a whole due to the lack of mondertaion of whose work is used for training and dislike for those who claim AI generated work to be their own original work. AI art generation has been threatening artists' livelihoods through the theft of their own work and many are demanding increased regulation on the subject.

A screenshot of the artist social media Artstation. A point where the social medias homepage was filled with protests depicting variations of a circle with a line through it ontop of the large letters AI with a subcaption that varies but falls on the lines of "No to AI generated images."

(Screenshot by Brereton of Artstation Homepage, 2023)

Side by side comparison of an artists work and work generated by AI with the prompter using the artists name as the prompt.

(U/shawnmalloyrocks, 2022)

Theft Issues within training

For AI to generate images, it requires training. AI trains by being fed work created by humans to understand patterns within works of art and will distort (frequently smoothing out any texture) and collages the work of various artists to fulfill its command. The work that is feeding AI training is art work posted on social media and websites that has been scraped (collected without any consent) by AI companies. Due to the nature of AI, basically making a collage of work and blending the seams together, the artist's work stolen to train AI ends up being used directly in the works generated by AI.

An example would be this side by side comparison created by the artist u/shawnmalloyrocks on Reddit. When comparing the works, one can see what features were directly borrowed from which work. It is also visible that the AI is unable to understand the use of texture in work as it smooths everything within the work and generalizes colors used in its reference works. The AI combines the original and unique art style with common trends seen across other more popular art styles.

Replacing Artists in Industry

“As an experimental effort to help the anime industry, which has a labor shortage, we used image generation technology for the background images of all three-minute video cuts!”

(@NetflixJP on X)

Netflix announced the animated short film "The Boy and The Dog" on X. In said post, they referenced a "labor shortage" as the reason for using AI for the backgrounds. The reality is that there is no shortage in people capable of working with animation. There is a shortage of people willing to subject themselves to the harsh conditions and minimal pay that come from working in the animation (especially anime) industry. Netflix is working around their inability to hire artists that fall under their price standards by using AI.

Many other companies (not just Netflix) with many other types of specialties (not just animation) are replacing artists for the cheaper AI alternative. Companies wanting art for things such as advertisements or product labels take advantage of such resources.

About-the-process shots provided by Netflix within the credits of the short film which display the use of AI:

Artist Who Won Art Contest with AI-Made Image Sues for CopyrightJason Allen's "creative input is on par with that expressed by other types of artists."

"Understanding that the process through which these machines generate images depends ultimately on a machine learning process that involves the use of copyrighted artworks, has led many artists to allege that AI art is theft. There has already been a substantive debate in the literature concerning whether this use of copyrighted material by AI image generating software constitutes copyright infringement in the United States."

(Shoemaker, 2024)

Lack of Individuality and Integrity: Copywrite

When someone creates artwork, they imbude it with their own special touch. AI generalizes the special work countributed by the various artists whose work was taken and used as training. As some people view the proscess of AI generation as using a tool to express themselves, some have come to call themselves "AI Artists". As these people title themselves, there has arisen countriversy as AI meerly collages work and does almost all the work in the gathering and combining of work.

There was one instance where an AI "artist" won first place in the Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition. He submitted his work in the "digital art" category, a category which was typically reserved for digital illustrators and had not yet developed rules towards AI art generation. After he won, countreversy arose once it was revelaved that the piece was AI generated. After winning, he filed a motion for copywrite but was denied swiftly by the copywrite office due to it being AI generated. (Levine, 2024)

Brereton, D. (2023, March 24). The war against AI art. The War Against AI Art - by Dmitri Brereton.https://dkb.blog/p/the-war-against-ai-art
Coca-Cola. (2023, March 17). Coca-Cola® | Create Real Magic.YouTube. https://youtu.be/FPGDMj1QUBE?feature=shared.
Dooley, B., & Hida, H. (2021, February 24). Anime is booming. so why are animators living in poverty?. The New York Times.https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/24/business/japan-anime.html
Edward, B. (2022, December 15). Artists stage mass protest against ai-generated artwork on artstation. Ars Technica.https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/artstation-artists-stage-mass-protest-against-ai-generated-artwork/.
Levine, G. (2024, October 1). Artist who won art contest with ai-made image sues for copyright. Artist Who Won Art Contest with AI-Made Image Sues for Copyright.https://80.lv/articles/creator-of-ai-made-image-winning-art-contest-sues-for-copyright/.
Netflix Japan. (2023, January 1). X.com. X (formerly Twitter).https://x.com/NetflixJP/status/1620357552025538561.
Netflix Japan. (2023b, January 31). アニメ・クリエイターズ・ベースアニメ「犬と少年」本編映像 - Netflix. YouTube.https://youtu.be/J9DpusAZV_0?feature=shared.
Shoemaker, E. Is AI Art Theft? The Moral Foundations of Copyright Law in the Context of AI Image Generation. Philos. Technol. 37, 114 (2024).https://doi-org.ezp3.lib.umn.edu/10.1007/s13347-024-00797-x.
U/shawnmalloyrocks. (2022). R/stablediffusion on reddit: Artist comparison: Portraits generated in my style vs. handmade portraits by me. (my thoughts about being a hybrid AI/digital/traditional artist included). Reddit.https://www.reddit.com/r/StableDiffusion/comments/zn9yg3/artist_comparison_portraits_generated_in_my_style/.

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