New AI Image Generation Program

[Cat]

I read an article about a new AI (artificial intelligence) image generation program called DALL-E that's supposed to be able to generate life like images based on a sentence that you give it. I was all excited thinking that it would be a great way to create some placeholder photos for Christmas cards and the like without needing to worry about model release forms and all that. 

Well... er... um... maybe not! Seriously, I can NOT stop laughing! 

But maybe it would be useful for something else? Anyhow, here's the URL if anybody wants to try it out. https://labs.openai.com/

[Malissa]

Oh man, we've played with sites like this a bit at home and they made some pretty cool stuff.  I am definitely worried original art/artists will be getting phased out in the future.  😥

[KeegansCreation]

I've read that concern in a number of blog posts but I don't think it will happen. It will change the world of commercial art, I am sure. Just as everything from player pianos to autotune changed the world of commercial music. Artists will adapt and they will bend the medium to their will as they bent Photoshop and other digital art tools to their will.

My predictions:

• As digital art becomes more ubiquitous, physical art will be more valuable because it isn't easy to reproduce. Live music is as popular as ever despite the ubiquity of recorded music.
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• Artists will bend the tool to their vision as happened with other digital tools. Photoshop was originally just a way for photographers to tweak their photos to look better (or the people in them to look better) and now there are fantastical landscapes made by photobashing.
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• Computers democratize technique but not sensibility. You don't have to be Mondrian to draw rectangles and lines and fill some of them in. Countless programs will do that. But you do have to be Mondrian to think of it first, and then to know what colors to use, the aspect ratios of the rectangles and placement of the rectangles and lines.
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• Artists will push the boundaries of this new technology, showing us things we never even considered before. AI democratizes realism. You don't have to be a good painter to create an image of dinosaurs in an orchard (upthread example) but you do have to actually think that this is something that should exist. The boundaries of imagination will be pushed now that the constraints of being able to paint (including digitally paint) have been removed and the next frontier is what can you envision well enough to describe it to the program.

[Longdistgramma3]

🤣😁😄😃  Oh my god that is hysterical..

[Cherie]

I won't be using AI art in the near future, it's gone completely wild and it's got too many unknown variables, like the mention of 'art theft' as in the programs are 'scraping' images from the internet, being unfair to artists ... so much more to it. There's a lot more negatives about it so I'm steering clear. I'm sure it's all in the way one uses it, but I'll just keep reading the pros and cons for now.

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ai-art-vtubers-unclear-ethics-worry-artists-1952140/ 

[Cherie]

First class-action lawsuit, someone said it wasn't the first, but this is still going to happen, by more and more people .... https://www.youtube.com/live/IQJVWN_-jB8?feature=share

I've seen where an artist's art was taken without their permission, one of which who had just passed away, and they stole his art to upload into their data banks! Sick. Art theft on every level and if people use these programs, it just adds to the theft.

It's good to read the pros and cons of it all, get a sense of where artists are coming from when they say they detest it, hate it, truly despise it and have good reason to. A comment from Steven Zapata Art at YouTube.

Another good place to read about it all: https://youtu.be/8KfN8FLOYno

[KeegansCreation]

AI art right now is where hip hop was in the 80's. When a technology emerged that made it easy to collage small slices of music into a larger whole, hip hop musicians went all in and recordings were made that could not be made today because of copyright infringement. Legal controls around sampling tightened up. After many hip hop musicians were sued for their use of samples, regulations were made (or existing regulations actually enforced) so that sampled musicians would be financially compensated. Now samples have to be licensed.

I suspect a similar thing will happen with AI art. The situation is exactly the same except it's visual rather than musical art. Those late 80's/early 90's suits may be brought up as precedent. I also suspect the eventual resolution will be similar. Probably in the future, AI developers will probably have to pay licensing fees to use the work of living artists.

Similar criticisms arose then too. If the Beastie Boys use a drum break from an obscure early 60's song instead of drumming, are they making music? If I fidget around with commands util I come up with a reasonable representation of a cat wearing a lab coat (my avatar) did I make art? Yes and yes. But I pay a fee to Midjourney to use their AI and they should pay a fee to whoever had their art fed into the training database.

[Signa]

True I pay 75 a month to nightcafe it seems like with how many are paying fees they should have to pay a fee to whoever helped the  training database. 

[Signa]

I've been using it a lot, but you do have to be careful and do an image check for similar images before you use them. I would say about  6/9ths of it is completely unusable because it ends up looking exactly like a celebrity but it can give you a good starting point.  I would use at least 14 descriptions of what you want, Here's an unusable example that I still love, I could probably use it but it's safer not to since it looks a lot like Anya Taylor-Joy

[Signa]

I think for this my description was Royalty, eyes closed, fish fin top, coin crown, golden, sparkles, blues, shadows, centered, flowing, celestial, long neck, stars, theater, pattern, sad  

[Anne]

Wonderful work, @Signa! Did you create this with DALL-E?

[Signa]

Not all of it but Night Cafe was used on a lot of it.  

[Signa]

Here's an example of my work without it 🙂 Hope - HITRECORD actually there's a lot of my non AI work and collabs for free on the hit record community.  

[CreativeLeahG]

One also has to check the images used to create a compilation are all suitable for commercial use as some are not. This for me is far too much work. How are you getting along checking them all?

[KeegansCreation]

The training database isn't accessible to end users.

[Signa]

All you have to do is put in your own input image then select like 20 percent for the weight of it on how similar it needs to be 🙂 At least that's how it works for Nightcafe I haven't tried the other ones. 

[Jstonge]

Too funny

[ShadoWind]

I am not a fan of AI....It might be different if the artists getting there work used to train AI were consenting artists who got paid to contribute or were consenting to donate their art to the cause... if that were the case it could be an interseting tool and maybe even something I would be interested in ....but as it is...

Nope! just IMO...feel free to disagree...I am seeing a lot of zazzlers using it so prob an unpopular opinion here...srry 

Also IF there is anyone on here who is of my same opinion you might interested to know there is a website you can search to find out if your artwork or designs have been used by AI to train its:  https://haveibeentrained.com/

I found a number of my images...many of the scraped from my most popular zazzle designs.....who knows how many I am missing but I opted out the ones I found. 

For those of you creating images with AI for your shops....a word of warning...AI art is not protected by any copyrights...so the AI generated images your using on products can be taken and used by anyone else who wants to and sold on their POD shops too...because no laws on that yet! 

works I have opted out useing the website above so far:

[CreativeLeahG]

This is very bad news and sorry this has happened to you. I did read the sites terms and it says users need to check themselves if the art they provide via their site has copyrights attached to it. For this reason I would never use this AI tool for anything commercial.

[KeegansCreation]

There is no reason to not use it for commercial use since it is impossible to accidentally recreate somebody's copyrighted image. None of the AI models collage pieces of scraped images. What they do is take general concepts from the millions and millions of scraped images and associate them with the tags that came with those images. If you type "dog" in the prompt it has a "concept" of the several million images tagged "dog" that it was trained on and can generate some sort of dog.

If you give it a starter image, it will alter that image so much that at most it would be called a derivative work, if it even got that close. I gave it a picture of my house and it gave me back a picture of a different house that had similar architecture.

What it can do, and what will likely be in legal dispute in the future, is make it possible to infringe on copyright and trademark intentionally (but not accidentally). If you type Batman or Darth Vader in the prompt (starter images are not necessary) it will give you back something that is recognizably Batman or Darth Vader. It won't be an already existing image of those iconic characters but it will look like some sort of recognizable fan art. It's quite possible it was fed lots of fan art since I have read it was image websites that were scraped such as Getty Images, Flickr and Pintrest (which could be where ShadoWind's images were scraped from). These are not legal to sell but it isn't possible to generate them accidentally. The owning companies may bring cases that require those  prompts to be disallowed (as various porn and gore prompts are currently disallowed) or they may be ok with it as long as nothing is sold and it stays in the realm of fan art. Time will tell.

Putting a celebrity name in the prompt generates something that looks like a caricature or fan art. The developers said this is by design to prevent deepfakes.

A very strong legal case- which will probably be made in 2023- is "in the style of (name of living artist)" prompts being disallowed. If they scraped all the paintings that famous arts X put on Flickr then it can generate something in that general style (similar palette, similar composition etc.) if somebody puts that artist's name in as a prompt. I strongly suspect that will be disallowed after some court cases.

What it excels at- and which doesn't infringe on any living artists- is generating images in generic art styles (watercolor, oil paint etc.) or in the style of artists long in the public domain such as Renoir. In fact, after some court cases I expect to happen in the future, that is perhaps the entirety of what it will do, if non-public domain images get removed from its database and trademarked characters and living people's names get removed from its prompts. It is also quite good at generic style prompts such as "neon colors" or "3D render" but I do wonder if commercial render engines (which each have their own style) can continue to be used as prompts.

In any case, you can't stumble onto infringement. You can intentionally create the sort of fan art which Zazzle will not allow, but not by accident.

[PAZP]

Thank you for taking the time to give an informative view of this. 

[KeegansCreation]

Addendum to my above post. I wrote it entirely with Midjourney in mind (which is the one I use primarily) and it is the one which will re-imagine an uploaded image into something derivative or "inspired by". However, DALL-E2 has outpainting which does not change the uploaded image in any way but instead uses artificial intelligence to build out from it. Photoshop has a less effective (but still useful) form of this called Content Aware Fill. In that case it would absolutely be a copyright infringement if the uploaded photo is copyright protected and probably where the "make sure your uploaded image is not copyright protected" warning is found. (Although when it generates an image from a prompt it will not accidentally re-create something copyright protected). This is not an issue with Midjourney but sure could be with DALL-E2. So yes, that Morguefile image that must be altered to be used commercially can't simply be outpainted in DALL-E2. But put it in Midjourney and ask it to be reimagined as a renaissance painting (for example) and that will be so different that the original photographer who put it on MorgueFile wouldn't recognize it.

My workflow is to generate an image in Midjourney and then use DALL-E2 to fix the wonky bits with inpainting, if possible. Or to make it wider or taller with outpainting. 

[CreativeLeahG]

It may be impossible to recreate someones original image but it entirely possible that the new image was created using copyrighted images and that's the part that is illegal without the proper permissions and the site states is up to the user to determine if all the elements they use are free for commerical use. The fact the remade image is something entirely different is not the issue, the issue is that AI program is potentially using someones copyrighted material to generate those new images without permission. Now in my mind it is the site that is at fault, BUT they seem to be passing the legal onus onto the user, where this stands in actual legal practice I do not know. BUT it will be possible in some cases for an artist to recognize their own 'manipulated' artworks and if they do, they have a case against someone as they never gave permission for AI or the end user to use it for image generation, derivative or otherwise. For example if I ever see my original images ''derivates works therof' being sold on Zazzle I will come down on them like a ton of bricks. I'd only need to recognize a single element (eyeball) to have a case.

[ColsCreations]

It may be impossible to recreate someones original image but it entirely possible that the new image was created using copyrighted images and that's the part that is illegal without the proper permissions and the site states is up to the user to determine if all the elements they use are free for commerical use. The fact the remade image is something entirely different is not the issue, the issue is that AI program is potentially using someones copyrighted material to generate those new images without permission. Now in my mind it is the site that is at fault, BUT they seem to be passing the legal onus onto the user, where this stands in actual legal practice I do not know.

This using a starter image in one of the AI text-to-image generators  is IMO no different than the countless other ways  already in existence that people can use copyrighted work illegally / without permission. A Xerox machine can produce infinite exact copies of any image. Photoshop allows you to edit and thus make derivatives of any image you choose to import into it. Sites all over the internet, including Zazzle and other PODs and stock sites you can sell on, work on the TOS premise that you agree to only upload images you have full right to. The onus is always on the individual, the honor system. If someone took one of your invitation designs, edited it to suit them, then took it to the self-serve counter at Staples and ran off copies of it to hand out, are you going to hold the manufacturer of the copy machine responsible? The person would not have been able to make the copies without the machine, but the machine is not responsible for the user's lack of ethics and illegal activity. If the person edited your image using Photoshop on a Windows 10 system on a HP computer, are you going to go after HP, Microsoft and Adobe, all of which contributed to the person having the means to illegally use your image?

[CreativeLeahG]

I am very impressed with your level of research and resulting insight into this. Thank you.

[Malissa]

Ugh.  I found some of my art on there.  Do you need to create an account to stop them from using it?

[Barbara]

I just checked, and yes, you have to create an account, but it appears harmless.

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[Malissa]

I imagine this will be the same swatting at flies as the trouble keeping stolen image off Amazon and the like. 

[MarilynR]

Re: Malissa post and Keegan's creations response

AI 1 Freelance writers -1

Sorry my sister and I are a bit shook up. We found a writing site six months ago and have done great with it. I just finished an article and went to post it in the $50 range. I expected a sale tomorrow or Monday and a PayPal payment within hours. We had noticed a drop off in September. We didn't expect this.

https://contentgather.com/blog/farewell

Don't know if other writing sites will follow.

Someone from Zazzle 

Please tell  us it won't happen here.

[Barbara]

The entire arena of AI gives me chills. Imagine the inevitable time when all the arts--visual, literary, musical--can be artificially produced. Here, we're talking mainly visual, but the post about AI-produced articles creeped me out. I've already watched music beginning to go there too. I'm glad I'm old and won't see the result: a sapping of the human spirit.

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[MarilynR]

Don't worry. Remember Hal in 2001 singing "Daisy" as he faded. 

AI can't produce the same quality as people. It repeats what it has learned and doesn't add anything new. When  we first read the announcement about the writing site this morning, we felt replaced. Then, we realized that there are writers at various skill levels. Some add more to their writing and it's less boring. It should be distinguishable from AI writing, but some writers aim for quantity over quality and their work is probably indistinguishable from AI. So the writing site is probably trying to protect themselves from copyright infringement. We think they should be able to protect themselves by using copyscape, but they're moving on.

My concern is how it affects Zazzle.  They have allowed stock images but this thread has interesting discussion of AI art sources. I'm wondering what Zazzle's policy will be toward AI art and then how they will tell the difference.

[Barbara]

@MarilynR  My concern isn't for now. Instead, I'm extrapolating in the way someone might have back in the Ford Model T days and imagining a Tesla future where cars drive themselves. Sci-fi writers do this sort of envisioning, and apparently I do some of it too, thus scaring the cr*p out of myself.

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[Barbara]

Searching quickly, I found only one of my images. Along the way, however, I realized the image collecting is done indiscriminately, given that a number of images come from pay-to-play image stock companies. We can probably predict lawsuits in the near future.

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[KeegansCreation]

There will be lawsuits, many of them. I think this will be one of the major legal questions of 2023. It hasn't been legally explored before because the technology is so recent. Law always lags behind tech.
A parallel legal question has come up via multiple lawsuits brought by social media companies against AI companies. Q: Is it legal to scrape user photos for facial recognition AI training and user profile data for analytics from social media companies? A: yes, because that is all public data.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/18/web-scraping-legal-court/ 

"In its second ruling on Monday, the Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, which governs what constitutes computer hacking under U.S. law"

However, that doesn't address the matter of copyright. It was ruled legal to scrape non-copyright protected (though privacy invading) images and data. (It went to the Supreme Court which kicked it back to the Ninth Circuit.) But what about copyright protected material? Some of the training data is verifiably copyright protected, as discussed in this thread. Will the fact that it doesn't generate copyright protected images be enough of a defense? (Although it does generate trademark protected images if given trademark protected prompts like Batman.) Facebook, Instagram, Linkdin and others lost their cases not to have social media data scraped by AI companies. But this might be different. Or might not. Warner Brothers, Disney and Getty Images will probably be the sorts to bring this to court. Will they fare better than facebook and Instagram? I have no predictions.

The ramifications are huge for large swaths of content.

Will it be legal to use protected text for AI training if  the generated text is unique?

Will it be legal to use protected images for AI training if the generated images are unique?

When the technology exists (and it will), will it be legal to use protected music for AI training if the generated music is unique?

Technology moves faster than law.

[Barbara]

When I was creating both art and music for video slide shows, my TOU always including a statement barring derivatives. I did this after seeing any number of people swipe things off the internet, change this and that, even flipping an image horizontally, and presenting things as their own work. This is essentially what AI is doing and doing it without the permission of the original artist. I'm not a happy camper. It would be different if the user of AI fed in only their own images or those in the public domain.

Conclusion: We here on Zazzle can have a blast playing with AI, but it might be wise to not use the results on products for sale.

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[CreativeLeahG]

I agree and I wonder if Zazzle might need to future-proof themselves should a law come in that relates to the use of AI created art for commercial purposes. In that they might have to reject refuse anything AI generated if it potentially breaches copyright laws??

@Scott what do you think?

[MarilynR]

I agree in thinking that Zazzle should ban AI generated art whether a designer or customer is trying to use it. 

However, that is where the problem arises. As I mentioned above, so far the one writing/content site is closing because they say their editors can't tell the difference when reading articles that writers submit for inclusionn in the marketplace. They could run all articles through Copyscape. Many writing sites do that or they could only accept articles with the extra flair and personality that better writers add. After all, a professor wrote an article saying that an AI essay couldn't present a topic as would be needed to get more than an F in college. The same should be true of blogposts written by AI and better writers.

Zazzle's policy has been to only react to images If there is a challenge and then they just remove it. I don't know if they search the internet to see if there is any possible validity to the challenge but I am concerned that the possibility of a lot of scraped AI art suddenly being added to Zazzle may cause Zazzle to make a decision detrimental to innocent designers like the writing site did.

[Scott]

We don't allow content that infringes on the rights of others. Doesn't matter if it's in watercolor or ink or Photoshop or AI. Below is an applicable passage from our User Agreement:

3.1.3. upload, download, post, email, message or otherwise transmit any Content that may violate or infringe any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other intellectual or proprietary right of any party. As a guideline, you may contribute only original work that you have created yourself from original elements. This means you can't use images of celebrities or corporate products, nor images, text, or designs that you've copied from a website or search engine without written permission from the owner. You cannot create a "new" image using elements from images other people have created. You cannot contribute a quote or a slogan that is substantially the same as something already written by someone else. By uploading any Content, you represent and warrant that you have the lawful right to reproduce and distribute such Content and that the Content complies with all applicable federal, state and local laws, regulations and ordinances;

[Barbara]

Thank you, @Scott  for the quote. It settles what can and can't be done and makes me feel better, at least when it comes to Zazzle.

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[CreativeLeahG]

This is good news, but what about all the content that now exists on Zazzle that has been generated by AI as some have already noted they do? Is it going to be the usual case of a copyright holder to identify the infringing works and report them? I am assuming there is no other way to approach this, aside that is from a clear instruction to members that they don't use AI-generated works for commercial purposes on Zazzle.

[Barbara]

Zazzle has probably done the only thing possible, which is to react to take-down notices. There's way too much art already on the site plus more and more every day. An interesting problem could occur if someone here uses AI art that, just by chance, uses part of an original design by a creator already here.

It may take a while, but I truly believe trouble is on the horizon, and in the end, it will have been caused by AI itself and its attitude that's so much like many people floating around the internet: If I can see it, I have the right to use it. Over the years, I've had people say exactly that to me. They received quite the earful from me.

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