Are A.I. Image Generators Violating Copyright Laws?
Two new lawsuits argue that tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are infringing on artists’ rights
For my final reading blog, I have decided to read about an article that merges aspects of the art world with an issue every artist has to deal with at some point in their artistic career: copyright laws. The beginning of the article discusses how ai generators such as Midjourney, DALL-E, and Stable Diffusion are able to create images in mere seconds by sorting through the vast inventory of artworks available online and taking elements from them to create something new. Although this new technological advancement is certainly entertaining to try for yourself, it begs the question of if the artwork it creates is truly a new image and does not infringe on copyright laws of previous artists’ works. This aspect of the new AI technologies available at the common-man’s fingertips has found itself at the center of two new lawsuits.
Around the middle of January 2023, one of the largest stock image companies, Getty Images, had instigated legal actions against the previously mentioned generator Stability AI for claims that the Ai company has disregarded the proper licensing options and legal protections while practically ripping off millions of Gettys’ images. This actually wasn’t the only time the company was sued, with three different artists coming together to file lawsuits for how this Ai company, along with others like Midjourney, ‘violate the rights of millions of artists’ by taking their artworks and failing to give them any credit. Many of these AI generators are actually charging customers to use their software so they are making money off these works without giving any monetary contributions to the original artists that had at least given inspiration the images these ai’s are outputting. The AI companies however are standing their ground and stating that their service is simply deriving inspiration from other artists in the same way that real artists do, with little of the art that is created in this world being a completely original idea. They argue that the AI is learning from these images in the same way that we as humans would. With this only being the early development of these new AI technologies, issues like this will inevitably become problems we are forced to deal with as more and more Ai developments are being integrated into our society in many different ways, not just within the art world.