Dive into a high-stakes legal saga questioning the ethical and legal boundaries of utilizing artists’ creations to train generative AI systems in the United States. This legal clash brings artificial intelligence experts face-to-face with the artistic community, shining a spotlight on platforms like Stability, DeviantArt, Runway AI, and the much-scrutinized Midjourney.
Midjourney, a widely popular platform, faces allegations of leveraging internal lists featuring 4,700 items, including artworks and styles, to train its generative AI. These lists, reportedly sourced from Wikipedia and artists contributing to the Magic: The Gathering game series, take center stage in the case. Internal communications suggest that developers were aware of copyright concerns related to AI models utilizing existing artworks and artists as early as 2022.
In a revealing screenshot circulating widely, a nonchalant approach towards potential legal issues is exposed: «Just use those scraped datasets and conveniently forget what you used to train the AI model. Boom: legal problems solved forever.»
The case takes a significant turn as AI-generated visuals are now directly linked to existing artists’ names. One plaintiff, Kelly McKernan, made a surprising discovery — an artificial image replicating her style ranking as the top online search result for her name.
The plaintiffs, including illustrators Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, Karla Ortiz, H. Southworth, Grzegorz Rutkowski, Gregory Manchess, Gerald Brom, Jingna Zhang, Julia Kaye, and Adam Ellis, assert that AI image devices serve as «intellectual property laundering machines,» providing the benefits of art without engaging the artist.
Initially filed by three illustrators, the case against Midjourney and DeviantArt faced challenges in proving copyright infringement unless images were nearly identical. Despite the dismissal, a Californian federal court left room for a revised complaint, recognizing the difficulty in proving the use of artists’ works in creating AI-generated images.
This precedent-setting legal battle is closely monitored by the AI service providers’ ecosystem and reverberates within the artistic realm, particularly in fashion and luxury industries, where AI is both a valuable tool and a potential threat.
