Many people are skeptical about the ethical nuances of new technology that can quickly generate an image in response to a given prompt. All these technologies have recently become widely accessible to the public. Now, anyone who is able to write a prompt (or generate it with another AI service) can quickly get an image replicating the style of a particular artist.
Artists who have worked hard, sometimes for decades, to create a unique style may find these users’ ability to request “art in the style of…” a direct threat to their career.
The AI-generated images are inspired by works created by human hands and minds through a painful process of mistakes, learning, and hard work. Artwork by unknown artists shared on social media is collected in databases along with pieces created by renowned old masters and modern geniuses. Information and data are collected without safeguards or consent.
Artists’ works are being added to databases without permission and often without the ability to choose not to participate. Then the AI image-generating services use these works to create their images for third parties, for a very affordable price, without any royalty to the artists.
This situation that unfolds raises a list of uneasy questions:
- What effect will AI-created art have on the art industry and human artists?
- Could companies opt to use AI instead of graphic designers to design their logos, media, and presentations? (This is a very practical field where creators directly make money).
- Is there a possibility that illustrators will not be required to create illustrations and book covers in the future?
- Will individuals stop hiring artists and instead use a program to create artwork in their preferred style?
- How original or creative can AI-generated art truly be?
- Who has accountability for AI-generated art and who owns it?
How Does This Image Generation Work, Exactly?
AI art, or Artificial Intelligence art, is created by feeding an algorithm with pre existing images to generate its own artwork and other forms of art. Nonetheless, AI art creators utilize artwork from artists without their permission in most cases.
All this basically means that the AI art generators plagiarize freely to generate output. AI art is considered unethical due to its involvement in taking from artists’ original work, diminishing the efforts of non-AI artists, and reducing job opportunities for emerging artists.
Jason Allen, an art contest contender, submitted AI-generated “art” to the fine arts contest at the Colorado State Fair, eventually winning the $300 first-place award, as reported by The Washington Post. He completed the task without revealing that his submission was created by AI. So, while the other competitors sketched their artwork manually, contributing skill and effort, he used software to produce his piece.
In addition, he was able to achieve more success by winning the competition than his fellow artists. Obviously, this was not a fair competition and the art piece created by a human and the one created by a machine just cannot be compared, let alone in a competition of that level.
This is only one instance among numerous cases of AI-generated art being unjust to artists who manually create their artworks. AI users are being recognized as “artists” and gaining popularity (of various kinds, even if it is only a social media account) without investing the equivalent efforts, time, and skill development as the original artists. Moreover, they are literally plagiarizing the original artists’ work. This clearly showcases the influence of AI art on artists and the opportunities it takes away from them.
AI-generated images also have the possibility of affecting artists on a larger scale. AI generations generally do not threaten the larger and more time-consuming projects that exist physically, like murals, but that is not the case when it comes to basic jobs such as drawing for company logos, creating ad images, and book illustrations which people use to build their resumes. Companies might prefer AI services to keep the costs low, so these smaller jobs will eventually vanish, directly impacting many people with education, experience, and skill. People creating unique designs for all kinds of projects, from charity to under 1 hour withdrawal casinos may very quickly find themselves unable to find a job.
It’s already hard enough for an artist to create original work, so for an AI art generator to steal artists’ preexisting work to generate other art, prompts the question of how much more unethical AI generated can get in the future.
The Dangers of Uncontrolled Inappropriate Content Generation
AI technology has already been utilized numerous times to generate realistic images of actual individuals, including minors. AI image generators have been taught to use inappropriate images of minors, making it simpler for the software to produce relevant images on command.
This also brings up the concern that this software can be freely used to generate explicit photos using real people’s images as a reference (the so-called deepfake images and videos). This software can be used maliciously and damage someone’s reputation. If there is a person’s picture available online, a nude photo of them can be created in a matter of seconds.
AI-generated images are very poorly regulated in terms of copyright but this new feature is truly concerning because there are even fewer regulations. There are already several lawsuits out there addressing the cases of faking images of real people and spreading them online.
