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<\/div>\nKelly McKernan\u2019s acrylic and watercolor paintings are bold and vibrant, often featuring feminine figures rendered in bright greens, blues, pinks and purples. The style, in the artist\u2019s words, is \u201csurreal, ethereal \u2026 dealing with discomfort in the human journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
The word \u201chuman\u201d has a special resonance for McKernan these days. Although it\u2019s always been a challenge to eke out a living as a visual artist \u2013 and the pandemic made it worse \u2013 McKernan now sees an existential threat from a medium that\u2019s decidedly not human: artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been about a year since McKernan, who uses the pronoun they, began noticing online images eerily similar to their own distinctive style that were apparently generated by entering their name into an AI engine.<\/p>\n
The Nashville-based McKernan, 37, who creates both fine art and digital illustrations, soon learned that companies were feeding artwork into AI systems used to \u201ctrain\u201d image-generators \u2013 something that once sounded like a weird sci-fi movie but now threatens the livelihood of artists worldwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were tagging me on Twitter, and I would respond, \u2018Hey, this makes me uncomfortable. I didn\u2019t give my consent for my name or work to be used this way,’\u201d the artist said in a recent interview, their bright blue-green hair mirroring their artwork. \u201cI even reached out to some of these companies to say \u2018Hey, little artist here, I know you\u2019re not thinking of me at all, but it would be really cool if you didn\u2019t use my work like this.\u2019 And, crickets, absolutely nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKernan is now one of three artists who are seeking to protect their copyrights and careers by suing makers of AI tools that can generate new imagery on command.<\/p>\n
The case awaits a decision from a San Francisco federal judge, who has voiced some doubt about whether AI companies are infringing on copyrights when they analyze billions of images and spit out something different.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re David against Goliath here,\u201d McKernan says. \u201cAt the end of the day, someone\u2019s profiting from my work. I had rent due yesterday, and I\u2019m $200 short. That\u2019s how desperate things are right now. And it just doesn\u2019t feel right.\u201d<\/p>\n
The lawsuit may serve as an early bellwether of how hard it will be for all kinds of creators \u2013 Hollywood actors, novelists, musicians and computer programmers \u2013 to stop AI developers from profiting off what humans have made.<\/p>\n
The case was filed in January by McKernan and fellow artists Karla Ortiz and Sarah Andersen, on behalf of others like them, against Stability AI, the London- based maker of text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. The complaint also named another popular image-generator, Midjourney, and the online gallery DeviantArt.<\/p>\n
The suit alleges that the AI image-generators violate the rights of millions of artists by ingesting huge troves of digital images and then producing derivative works that compete against the originals.<\/p>\n
The artists say they are not inherently opposed to AI, but they don`t want to be exploited by it. They are seeking class-action damages and a court order to stop companies from exploiting artistic works without consent.<\/p>\n
Stability AI declined to comment. In a court filing, the company said it creates \u201centirely new and unique images\u201d using simple word prompts, and that its images don\u2019t or rarely resemble the images in the training data.<\/p>\n
\u201cStability AI enables creation; it is not a copyright infringer,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
Midjourney and DeviantArt didn`t return emailed requests for comment.<\/p>\n
Much of the sudden proliferation of image-generators can be traced to a single, enormous research database, known as the Large-scale Artificial Intelligence Open Network, or LAION, run by a schoolteacher in Hamburg, Germany.<\/p>\n
The teacher, Christoph Schuhmann, said he has no regrets about the nonprofit project, which is not a defendant in the lawsuit and has largely escaped copyright challenges by creating an index of links to publicly accessible images without storing them. But the educator said he understands why artists are concerned.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a few years, everyone can generate anything \u2013 video, images, text. Anything that you can describe, you can generate it in such a way that no human can tell the difference between AI-generated content and professional human-generated content,\u201d Schuhmann said in an interview.<\/p>\n
The idea that such a development is inevitable \u2013 that it is, essentially, the future \u2013 was at the heart of a U.S. Senate hearing in July in which Ben Brooks, head of public policy for Stability AI, acknowledged that artists are not paid for their images.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no arrangement in place,\u201d Brooks said, at which point Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono asked Ortiz whether she had ever been compensated by AI makers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never been asked. I have never been credited. I have never been compensated one penny, and that\u2019s for the use of almost the entirety of my work, both personal and commercial, senator,\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n
You could hear the fury in the voice of Ortiz, also 37, of San Francisco, a concept artist and illustrator in the entertainment industry. Her work has been used in movies including \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,\u201d \u201cLoki,\u201d \u201cRogue One: A Star Wars Story,\u201d \u201cJurassic World\u201d and \u201cDoctor Strange\u201d She was responsible for the design of Doctor Strange\u2019s costume.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re kind of the blue-collar workers within the art world,\u201d Ortiz said in an interview. \u201cWe provide visuals for movies or games. We\u2019re the first people to take a stab at, what does a visual look like? And that provides a blueprint for the rest of the production.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s easy to see how AI-generated images can compete, Ortiz says. And it\u2019s not merely a hypothetical possibility. She said she has personally been part of several productions that have used AI imagery.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s overnight an almost billion-dollar industry. They just took our work, and suddenly we\u2019re seeing our names being used thousands of times, even hundreds of thousands of times.\u201d<\/p>\n
In at least a temporary win for human artists, another federal judge in August upheld a decision by the U.S. Copyright Office to deny someone\u2019s attempt to copyright an AI-generated artwork.<\/p>\n
Ortiz fears that artists will soon be deemed too expensive. Why, she asks, would employers pay artists` salaries if they can buy \u201ca subscription for a month for $30\u201d and generate anything?<\/p>\n
And if the technology is this good now, what will it be like in a few years?<\/p>\n
\u201cMy fear is that our industry will be diminished to such a point that very few of us can make a living,\u201d Ortiz says, anticipating that artists will be tasked with simply editing AI-generated images, rather than creating. \u201cThe fun parts of my job, the things that make artists live and breathe \u2013 all of that is outsourced to a machine.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKernan, too, fears what is yet to come: \u201cWill I even have work a year from now? \u201d<\/p>\n
For now, both artists are throwing themselves into the legal fight \u2013 a fight that centers on preserving what makes people human, says McKernan, whose Instagram profile reads: \u201cAdvocating for human artists.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, that\u2019s what makes me want to be alive,\u201d says the artist, referring to the process of artistic creation. The battle is worth fighting \u201cbecause that\u2019s what being human is to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photo: Kelly McKernan is an artist and one of three plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Artificial Intelligence companies they allege have have infringed on their copyright. (AP Photo\/George Walker IV)<\/em><\/p>\n Topics<\/span> InsurTech<\/a> Data Driven<\/a> Artificial Intelligence<\/a> <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Was this article valuable?<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n