Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are using imaging information from paintings and photographs to create new images in the same style. DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are among the AI tools that can create images that copy the styles of real artists.
A user can ask the system to produce an image, such as “a cat in the style of Van Gogh,” and the AI tool will quickly do so.
That makes living artists worry that their works will be copied without their permission. Two new legal actions, or lawsuits, have been brought against the AI companies creating the images.
Getty Images has brought one of the lawsuits. The American company is based in Seattle, Washington. It owns the rights to millions of pictures and other images.
Getty is accusing London-based company Stability AI of violating Getty’s copyright. Copyright protects works of authorship, including images and artworks. The owner can sell the work or permit others to use it.
Three working artists also took legal action this year against Stability AI, and the companies Midjourney and DeviantArt. The artists say the companies’ AI images unfairly “compete in the marketplace with the original images.”
Visitors view artist Refik Anadol’s “Unsupervised” exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023, in New York. The new AI-generated installation is meant to be a thought-provoking interpretation of the New York City museum’s prestigious collection. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Midjourney CEO David Holz recently spoke to TheAssociated Press about the issue.
“Can a person look at somebody else’s picture and learn from it and make a similar picture?” he asked, adding “it’s allowed for people and if it wasn’t, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry.”
Real versus fake images
The lawsuits come at a time when there is growing concern about new AI tools. These include systems that create readable text, music, computer code, and images. Some experts worry that AI technology could get too good, including engineer Wael Abd-Almageed.
“Once we lose this capability of telling what’s real and what’s fake, everything will suddenly become fake because you lose confidence of anything and everything,” he said. Abd-Almageed teaches electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California.
However, some artists welcome the AI systems as new tools for creativity.
FILE – Artist Refik Anadol poses in front of his work inside the Davos Congress Center in Davos, Switzerland Monday, Jan. 16, 2023. A new AI-generated installation — called “Unsupervised” —- by Anadol at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is meant to be a thought-provoking interpretation of the New York City museum’s prestigious collection. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
There is a lot of room for fear, but “what else can we do with them?” asked artist Refik Anadol, who uses AI to create.
In New York City, Anadol’s work “Unsupervised” is on show at the city’s world-famous Museum of Modern Art. The large installation represents the many artworks at the museum through a constantly changing image based on AI.
But Anadol hopes future uses of AI will permit artists to choose whether their art be included in new creations.
“I totally hear and agree that certain artists or creators are very uncomfortable about their work being used,” he said.
I’m Andrew Smith.
Matt O’Brien and Arijeta Lajka wrote this story for The Associated Press. Andrew Smith adapted it for VOA Learning English.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
