Greg Rutkowski, a digital artist known for his surreal style, opposes AI art but his name and style have been frequently used by AI art generators without his consent. In response, Stable Diffusion removed his work from their dataset in version 2.0. However, the community has now created a tool to emulate Rutkowski’s style against his wishes using a LoRA model. While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5. The debate highlights the blurry line between innovation and infringement in the emerging field of AI art.

  • CallumWells
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    1 year ago

    Strictly speaking it wouldn’t exactly be stealing, but I would still consider it as about equal to it, especially with regards to economic benefits. It may not be producing exact copies (which strictly speaking isn’t stealing, but is violating copyright) or actually stealing, but it’s exploiting the style that most people would assume mean that that specific artist made it and thus depriving that artist from benefiting from people wanting art from that artist/in that style.

    Now, I’m not conflicted about people who have made millions off their art having people make imitations or copies, those people live more than comfortably enough. But in your example there are still other human artists benefiting, which is not the case for computationally generated works. It’s great for me to be able to have computers create art for a DnD campaign or something, but I still recognize that it’s making it harder for artists to earn a living from their skills. And to a certain degree it makes it so people who never would have had any such art now can. It’s in many ways like piracy with the same ethical framing. And as with piracy it may be that people that use AI to make them art become greater “consumers” of art made by humans as well, paying it forward. But it may also not work exactly that way.

    • Otome-chan@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      People aren’t allowed to produce similar styles to other humans? So do you support disney preventing anyone from making cartoons?

      • CallumWells
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Now you’re making a strawman. Other humans that are actually making art generally don’t fully copy a specific style, they draw inspiration from different sources and that amalgamation is their style.

        Your comment reads as bad-faith to me. If it wasn’t meant as such you’re free to explain your stance properly instead of making strawman arguments.