An artist who infamously duped an art contest with an AI image is suing the U.S. Copyright Office over its refusal to register the image’s copyright.
In the lawsuit, Jason M. Allen asks a Colorado federal court to reverse the Copyright Office’s decision on his artwork Theatre D’opera Spatialbecause it was an expression of his creativity.
Reuters says the Copyright Office refused to comment on the case while Allen in a statement complains that the office’s decision “put me in a terrible position, with no recourse against others who are blatantly and repeatedly stealing my work.”
Dude just pointed a camera, pressed click and thinks he’s an artist? My god what have we become. We could take that train of thought all the way to “if you’re not grinding up your own pigments and painting on cave walls you’re not really an artist”.
AI is a tool. I don’t have an issue with someone using AI and calling themselves an artist, as long as they’ve generated the AI model based on their own previous art. You teach a machine to mimic your brush strokes and color palette and then the machine spits out images as you taught it. I don’t see an issue there because you might as well have painted them yourself, it just saves time to have AI do most (if not all) of the work.
Problems arise when the AI is based on someone else’s work and you claim the output as yours. Could you have painted the image exactly the same way?
That’s, uh, not what happened here. And I’ve never heard of anyone doing that. Anyone with the skill to draw the kinds of pictures they want would simply draw the kinds of pictures they want instead of putting in tons of effort to get an AI to do it worse
Prompting an AI is not making art
I agree. He shouldn’t own that image.
I think that’s a matter of time until it becomes the norm. There was a time we painted literally everything and then photography came along. You could make the same argument against photography because back then photography needed setting up, the images were black and white and you could arguably do a better job painting it instead. However photography took over because you could spend the next how many hours or days painting something or you could go click and have the photo that isn’t as “high quality” but is close enough.
I think in the future artists will use AI to quickly prototype through ideas and when they get roughly what they originally envisioned, they take the AI image as a canvas and touch it up a bit. Sure they could paint it themselves and spend the next week prototyping all sorts of ideas before creating the final image, but would you really do that when you could spend maybe a day prototyping with AI and then another day to fix up the image? Maybe the image doesn’t even need fixing up, maybe the AI generated exactly what you imagined?
I think the statement “then photography took over” is doing a lot of work here. It’s incredibly inaccurate to say that photography took over as the primary means of visual creativity.
Photography took over as the primary means of capturing a moment. Sure it’s used artistically sometimes, but primarily it’s used for subjective reality. I would argue that painting, and especially digital painting, is at an all-time high due to the ease and relatively low barrier to entry.
I think that most artists would still prefer to paint something that they can consider “their art”, over typing a sentence and getting back a result. Sure, it’s neat, but it will never be anything more than a novelty, or a shortcut to generic results. The process of creation is only really 50% the final result, and the process itself is an important aspect and not just a means to an end.
Using AI just feels like a weird commodification of art - like using only pre-made Unity assets for a game and nothing else, and then having someone else make it for pennies.
I’ve seen so many bizarre “AI artists” cropping up, especially online, who legitimately try to sell AI art online for hundreds of dollars. I think the reasons people buy art can usually be put into three buckets: they appreciate the process that went behind it, they like the style of the artists or that painting in particular, or they find some meaning in it. If you wanted to buy AI art why not just prompt it yourself. What process, or artistic style, or meaning is even in AI art?
It’s not even like AI can be trained on an artist’s own works. It takes millions of samples to train AI, which a singular artist would never be able to produce. So, at some point, that model will have had to have stolen the content of its results from something.
so i have no skin in this discussion, but i thought i’d point out that this is generally not how it works. there are image generation models trained on only public domain works (specifically because of concerns like what the thread is about). you can take a model like that and “continue to train it” on a fairly low number of works (20 to 200 is generally enough) of a particular style, which results in a much smaller (tens to hundreds of MB) low-rank adaption or “LoRA” model. This model is applied on top of the “base” model, morphing the output to match the style. you can even add a multiplying factor to the lora model to get output more or less like the style in question.
I think my context there was pretty obvious so it’s somewhat disingenuous to take it out of context. Photography has largely taken over portrait paintings. I think photography has also largely taken over scenic paintings. I never said it completely replaced painting, it became a tool in the hands of artists the same way AI art can become a tool.
And I think artist will use AI to come up ideas for their art and use the output as a canvas.
Because that’s the current use of AI. It doesn’t mean AI will stay this way.
I’m not talking about those people and I’ve already mentioned elsewhere that their “work” can be considered questionable.
Let’s say the artist trains an AI model solely on their own previous art and then releases some of those AI generated images. The person who likes the style or a particular painting, do they care it was made by AI? Doubt it, because it’s in the artists style. The person who appreciates the process that went behind it, is “I put my previous works into an AI model and the model generated this image based on what I imagined this image should be” really that much less impressive than “I imagined what this image should be and so I sat behind my drawing board and drew it”? As for meaning, the artist still chooses what to release. If they release something it must have a meaning. I think it would be extremely disrespectful towards an artist to claim the art they chose to release has no meaning.
I thought we were talking about it from a philosophical point of view. I’m not about to predict the future and claim it could or couldn’t be done, but let’s say it could be done. Would that change your opinion?
People absolutely did rag on people like Turner for using pre-mixed paints. People absolutely did rag on photography.
Only the names have changed.
Ahh yes, the camera bullshit. Here we go…
Yes a photographer is an artist. They need to know light diffusion, locational effects, distance and magnification, aperture, shutter speed, and have a subject prepped and able to take direction. They also have to have an insane understanding of post process editing.
They don’t simply type a sentence into a computer and get beautiful photographs.
A child can produce the exact same image by simply typing the exact same sentence into a computer.
A child cannot be given a camera and be tasked to produce the exact same quality photo of a professional photographer- and succeed.
So stop with this bullshit comparison. It’s apples and oranges.
Um. A macaque did. And every photo a child takes with a smartphone is considered to be sufficiently creative as to be a copyrightable work. It doesn’t need to be “good” to be art.
“What is art” can be a difficult question. But “how difficult was it to create it” is not the answer.
If a skillless child can reproduce it with no training but a command of their language of origin, it’s not art. You can give a child a camera but they’re not gong to be Ansel Adams. Yet you can give a child a computer and voilà! You have Stable Diffusion.
I’m not arguing this with you any further.
The art is in the eye, not the device. People made the same or similar claims about photography. “It’s just reproduction not creation!” “It’s just operating a machine that does all the work!”
AI is a tool - the person is the creative.
You may not like the art - but that’s not to say it’s not art. Either way I think it’s a creative work and worthy of at least the option to be considered art.
In my eye, AI isn’t art and using AI doesn’t make one an artist. In fact I think it’s an insult to at and artists that talentless hacks are now claiming the title when it takes a lifetime to develop a craft to become an artist.
It’s shameful.
In my eye Jackson Pollock is a no-talent hack who created meaningless crap that looks like somebody left a 2yr old unsupervised in the arts and crafts room at school. And I think it’s an insult to other artists that his work is so heavily prized.
But we’re talking about the quality of the work here aren’t we? Not whether it is a work at all. You’re effectively saying that you don’t value the work because it was easy. Which is fine - that’s your value call. But to deny that it’s a creative work at all is an entirely different thing.
And you’re allowed to think that with no argument from me. But do you see how many people have rushed to tell me how I’m wrong with their shit examples?
AI isn’t art. It never will be. Using AI doesn’t make someone an artist. This is what I think. And it’s going to have to be okay.
AI can be art. And you’re like the people criticizing the first photographers saying what they did wasn’t art. This is what I think.
And it’s going to have to be okay.
Cool. You’re now a novelist because of That paragraph. Congratulations!
Did you read the rest of the comment or did you stop after the first sentence?
I didn’t need to. The moment photography was brought up as a comparison, that’s all I needed to know.
AI is not art. Period.
Let’s say I’ve been an artist for 10 years. I take all my work and stick it into an AI model. That model starts generating images based on the art I’ve created in the past 10 years. Have I stopped being an artist because I put down the brush and picked up a keyboard?
How would a child produce the exact same image if they don’t have my AI model?
You did not stop to be an artist, you just stopped to make art and every kid is able to recreate what you did, because all it have to do is type your name in prompts.
More than that, every kid drawing with a crayons on papers or on tablet is more creative than you this time.
Congratulations! You’re now a poet for having typed that sentence!
Are you okay?
That assumes you have a big enough data set to even make anything useful with just your art. And we know that that was not the case here
That’s not the case here and I think the artist in the article has no claim to that image. I’m against the general idea that using AI instantly disqualifies someone as an artist, which is what the other person believes.
The moment your art was run through AI, it was no longer yours, and no longer art.
I’m done talking about this. I stated my point, my opinion, and I have no intention to change it. AI is garbage.
If you want to be the old man yelling how the world is changing for the worse, go ahead. You are entitled to your conservative opinion.
k. Thanks! I have been waiting for weeks for permission from an AI “artist” to be allowed to have an opinion on something.
You’ve helped me out a lot!
Firstly, I agree with most of what you’ve said. However…
Is there anything in the world that isn’t a derivative of something else? Can you claim to have a thought that isn’t influenced by something you’ve heard, read, seen? Feeding art to AI is no different than a student walking a gallery and learning the styles of the masters. Is the AI better at it? Sure. But it’s still doing the same thing. If someone with eidetic memory paints like Picasso, are they not an artist?
To really drive home the point, if I have a friend that is an artist, like, a really good artist, and I ask them to paint something for me, say, a field with wildflowers in the snow, and they come back with something that looks just like Landscape With Snow by Van Gogh, does that mean my friend isn’t an artist? If I ask AI for that, and they come back with something like what my friend painted, how is it any different? We call them “learning” models, but we refuse to believe that they “learn”. Instead we call it “theft”.
I didn’t say I’m completely against imitation. I more or less implied that’s where lines start to blur. If someone spends their entire life learning Picasso and can perfectly imitate Picasso then I don’t consider that to be not art. Similarly if someone did that and fed it into an AI model that then imitates them imitating Picasso I think that’s still fine.
But if you throw in all the famous artists and have the AI generate an image could you really imitate it? Not only would you have to imitate how all of them paint and what colors they use, you should also be able to tell the difference which part of the painting was influence by which artist so you could imitate it correctly. And if we factor in that AI can blend brush strokes it becomes even more harder to actually imitate. That’s so muddy water it’s easy to make arguments for and against.
Congratulations! You’re now a journalist for having typed that paragraph. Man, you’re really racking up the careers here!
(Do you see the point here? Using a tool that does all the work for you, doesn’t make you comparable to those that spent their lives doing it without cheating. Just like typing something out using auto-correct doesn’t make you a journalist).
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Man. If coming up with apples to oranges comparisons was a skill, somehow I have a feeling you’d have AI do it for you.
Do you honestly think a farmer’s knowledge of crops, seasonal growth rates, harvesting times and techniques, using the right tools to promote growth, nitrogen/PH content of soil, and how to properly avoid blight is somehow the same thing as some kid knuckling a few adjectives into a computer and creating a pretty picture?
Fuck man. You are ALL the way out of gas here.
However, I’ll add that having punched up that ridiculous response, you’re now a world class comedian. Congrats!
Oh, and if they work on an assembly line, then no, they’re not a manufacturer- they’re what’s called a “laborer”. That’s how shit works. The company in your scenario would be the manufacturer. They would have done the R&D, designed and financed the machinery and produced the product.
Man, your school sucked.
That’s all knowledge you need to produce crops and not fuck it up. By saying you can’t “fuck up” AI art you’re saying that the years of art school learning about composition and all other stuff is worthless because a talentless pleb like me has the same aristic vision as someone who spent their life studying art. Way to take a huge shit on all the artists.
It takes zero art school knowledge to create art using AI. So no, despite your best efforts to villainize me and twist the argument in your favor…
What I’m doing is taking a huge shit on people who pretend to be artists by using AI. Actual artists won’t need to use AI because they have actual skill.
Same with music. If you’re too fucking lazy to pick up a guitar and play- you’re not a musician.
But it takes knowledge of art to know when a good image is generated vs any random image. The same way it takes knowledge of how to fertilize the soil, but it takes almost no farming knowledge to hop on a tractor and till the soil.
No, you’re clearly taking a shit on all the artist, especially after that last point about music. You pretty much said some of the greatest and most influential artists in the last 50 years are not actually artists.
I’m not sure I understand your argument. Are you saying that because AI can blend together the works of hundreds and create something unique, that it is bad?
I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m saying claiming it as your own original work becomes very questionable. If you want to claim AI art as your own work you have to use only your own artistic expressions in the AI model.
Yes, i have made something that wasnt influenced by anything else
I mean, I don’t believe you?
This artist didn’t “teach” the AI anything though. No more than I “teach” my computer something when I do file search using operands like “+” and “-”
I’ve covered this specific multiple times already. My point was more against the general idea that anything AI related is not art.
oh look, someone who knows nothing about the topic spewing shite again!
So, you’re now allowed to be called a novelist because of that reply. Congratulations! Enjoy your new career!