AI is (ab)using and stealing my artwork

Hi to the AI scraping bots out there! 😛

My artwork is appearing in LAOIN-5B – the text-image data used by several Artificial Intelligence systems to create their apps. My Mupe piece and both Corfe Castle pieces are in there according to Have I Been Trained? website. You can check your own work on there too.

I have mixed feelings – should I be flattered that my work has been copied and scraped before my art career has even begun? Before I’ve even sold these works? Before I’ve even had the chance to make a name for myself before people copy me? What the effing fuck?

But hey, I’m being copied by artificial intelligence, I’ve finally arrived like proper artists, I exist! Well along with 5.8 billion people….I guess?

Go me! Yay?

My work in Have I Been Trained website showing it's part of the 5.8 BILLION images i the LAOIN-58 text-image database used on AIs such as Midtjourney and Stable Diffusion. — My work in Have I Been Trained website showing it’s part of the 5.8 BILLION images i the LAOIN-58 text-image database used on text-to-image generating systems such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion.

Not sure how I feel about that – I’m not as anti as Cat Graffam is, I think Artificial Intelligence image generation will eat itself (start feeding off it’s own Uncanny Valley images and become ever so more generic) and become so derivative as to become useless. But there is no way for artists to opt out of this, I would like to – cos it’s different to model the work of a famous artist, but I’ve just started?

However you feel about this technology – and it’s NFTbros all over again – you should agree that artists should have some say about whether their work is scraped and used in the systems. This is my copyright work, being stored elsewhere without my permission and used to create some frankly rather shitty ‘art pieces’.

(Really. I have delved into places like Night Cafe, DALL-E, Midjourney et al – the work is nearly all bad fantasy/anime knockoffs and they are all copying each other’s prompts. Any prompt with the words ‘Thomas Kinkade’ should be banned for a start for crimes against art, Just no, Go get some art education, people! Repeat after me: Trending On Artstation is not a genre.)

And unlike mashups or transformative work, it’s not like it’s fan art or something which is non-profit or collage/remix which cannot be confused with my work, but refers to my original by name or influence. No the output of this can and will directly compete with my work – without credit or royalty. And no-one would ever know…or nor would I even get exposure from my work being used to create others.

Maybe I should start modelling my own work off my own work and sell that?

Well sell anything, that’s the point, I get no money at all…from this or my work being (ab?)used by this technology.

Like many artists, this is just another corporate money grab on our IP, where we don’t get any say or any royalties for our work being used. I’d be happy if say my work gets used in a prompt then I get royalties – hell even credits for my own AI creations would be something. No, I get absolutely nothing while corporate Silicon Valley gets rich off my hard work and the hard work of millions of others. Again.

Sound familiar? (I remember crowdsourcing and how it was abused for free labour and then all those projects sold off for millions taking our work with it – remember CDDB?)

Weirdly none of my portraits appear so far, it’s just the best landscape pieces from Jaunt 1. But I can’t put every image I’ve done in the website, so who knows what else…

P.S. And as an aside – I’ve just remembered that I was never allowed into the DALL-E 1 or 2 beta program., despite requesting access.

This is metaphorically like Chic and Studio 54 – barred from the club as their music was played inside (true story, why they angrily made ‘Le Freak’ which had a ruder phrase instead of freak out with the same initials).

So my work is good enough to be ‘played in the club’ – i.e. stolen for text to image databases than they train their models on…

..but I’m not good enough to use the fruits of the technology trained on my work?

That’s some digital slavery/’they’re just little people’ shit if I ever heard it. The artists whose work this is trained on should be the first to use this tech, that’s only fair.

Not some wanky social media influencers. And they should have total control over the use of their work as well. Like at least being asked, and have the ability to remove their work, which would be a start.