🤖 AI Art's First Big Case

How will it affect other AI products?

Author

Davis McCondichie
January 16, 2023

Happy Martin Luther King Day!

AI art boundaries are being questioned and we're all over it.

In today's edition:

  • Stable Diffusion under class action scrutiny

  • Roundups of the top headlines and hottest product launches

  • Memes - come for the news, stay for the laughs

🎨 AI Art's First Big Case

The art world got a brushstroke of case law via a class action lawsuit filed over the weekend.

Background:

  • In 2022, Stability AI created and released Stable Diffusion, a deep learning, text-to-image model.

  • Training an AI model that generates art via prompts requires a massive number of "picture-to-word" pairings.

  • Stability AI trained Stable Diffusion using a dataset of these pairings with a Creative Commons license. LAION, a nonprofit funded by Stability AI, created the dataset.

Now, Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney are being sued by three artists and an antitrust law firm. The artists claim the three companies created products using Stable Diffusion that infringe on the rights of artists and other creators under the guise of AI.

⚔️ A contentious battle

This is not the first lawsuit of its kind. Last November, developers filed a class action lawsuit against GitHub for its auto-complete coding extension Copilot.

Stable Diffusion users can write prompts to generate art that looks like it was created by a specific artist. For example, you can type in "French cat in the style of (artist's name)" and get impressive results. This severely limits the earning potential of the original artist, even though their work was used to train the model.

The plaintiffs argue that AI image-generation products charge users per "generation" and yet artists get none of that revenue, even if the generations are based on their work.

The case might go to court and the companies could argue they are protected by fair use.

If an artist learned everything they know by studying all of Van Goh's work before painting their next work of art, their work wouldn't be considered copyright infringement as long as it wasn't a one-to-one copy. Will the argument stand if the "artist" is an AI tool?

AI image generators have turned scraping images from the internet into an unprecedented money printer. We'll keep a close eye on this case, which could paint the canvas for future litigations and business models.

🤠 Headline Roundup

Google Cloud dropped a new AI tool that lets retailers track their shelf inventories. You can now blame Google when your local Walmart is out of Fruit Loops. (The Wall Street Journal)

Lung cancer researchers improved screening for the nasty tumors by using AI to assist radiologists — a game changer for the medical community and patients alike. (IPM)

TTcare, a South Korean startup, can now diagnose your pet's health from phone photos. That means fewer trips to the vet for you and your pet. (Digital Camera World)

The Verge weighed in on the problems that come with the widespread usage of text generation, including some serious propaganda problems. (The Verge)

WIRED argued that rather than killing the whole industry, AI can help Hollywood film the unfilmable and make cinema more collaborative. (WIRED)

Horror fans weren't pleased with a David Cronenberg movie dreamed up by AI (Futurism)

ReelData raised $10.6 million CAD to help farmers monitor fish populations. (BetaKit)

🔥 Hottest Launches

Copyleaks - a multi-language content detector for schools and large organizations (link)

Scribble AI - a mobile ChatGPT app for essays, emails, cover letters, and more (link)

150 ChatGPT Prompts - a collection of prompts to make you a top 1% copywriter (link)

Getaiway - an AI-powered personalized trip planner for all your travel needs (link)

Saas Library - 100+ unique SaaS ideas that can be built with AI (link)

💼 Hiring Corner

Tweet of the day

1) A monkey took a selfie that went viral.

2) The camera owner tried to copyright the picture.

3) The courts ruled creations from non-humans (like animals or AI) are public domain.

That's a wrap for today. Stay curious and see you tomorrow! If you want more bite-sized content, be sure to follow me on Twitter (@jeremykuoo).