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Ask HN: Is AI generated artwork my artwork?

by kixpanganiban on 9/11/22, 12:43 AM with 14 comments

I've been generating images with AI for a while. First with Nightcafe Studio, then Disco Diffusion, and eventually settling down with Midjourney. I love the images I generate from MJ, especially after I've figured out the techniques.

For context, I can spend hours generating a single image that I like, continuously refining my prompts and word weights, stylization, composition, and so on. It certainly takes skill, but obviously very different from drawing the entire thing myself (which I can't).

I liked one of my recent images so much that I decided to post it publicly on an online forum for the first time. The response I got was very polarized. Among the standouts were: "stop claiming AI artwork to be your artwork, unless you made the AI that generated it." I disagree, obviously, but it got me thinking. What do you folks think?

I think that the democratization of art through AI is revolutionary, but I don't think we've figured out how we treat the ownership of artwork from AI yet. It learns to make images much the same way artists learn from other artists, but does that count?

  • by dtagames on 9/11/22, 1:08 AM

    Yes. It's your art. AI tools are just tools. When you use Photoshop, no one says Photoshop made the images. The art you make with AI software did not exist until you wrote the prompts. It isn't a copy of anything.

    This stuff is all new and will take time to settle in but I have no doubt as a user of Photoshop since v1.0 and DALL-E since the beta -- that these AI tools will be the norm in every artist and designer's toolbox.

  • by jasonjamerson on 9/11/22, 1:18 AM

    I've recently gotten a lot of attention for my Midjourney stuff, and I did cause it to be, and I do own the copyright, but I don't claim it as "my art." I think we know that's disingenuous because we didn't create the specific composition.

    It's like if I asked one of my assistants to paint something based on a paragraph I wrote, is that MY art? Not at all.

  • by mmastrac on 9/11/22, 1:49 AM

    If you never tell anyone it was AI that generated it, it's yours.

  • by Fricken on 9/11/22, 12:51 AM

    I don't think Frank Herbert can take credit for the imagery in Villeneuve's Dune, even though he came up with the text prompts. He gets full credit for the text prompts, though!

  • by groffee on 9/11/22, 2:34 AM

    No it's not. It's debatable if it even qualifies as 'art'.

  • by milkoolong on 9/11/22, 2:49 AM

    Would the artwork be in its own category: AI Artwork? Otherwise, I find it hard to support an AI-Artist who machine generated artwork based on "stealing" and "feeding" it 100.000s of creations from traditional/digital artists. The potential to profit off of it in one form or another is un-ethical. AFAIK, nobody have the rights to use their artwork without permission. Artists' artwork is not under a MIT license nor is it for sale as a stock image.

    It's flawed to think an artist referencing others to produce their original is the same as an AI-Artist stealing artwork to generate an original. Youtube, Facebook, TikTok reciprocates value to its customers in exchange for selling their data to advertisers.

    What value are YOU, the AI-Artist, providing the artist for their data?

    Note: I'm ignorant in this area. My views are based on personal conversations with how influencer artists' feel about this popular trend.