An unwilling illustrator found herself turned into an AI model (waxy.org)

Article summary

An illustrator, Hollie Mengert, discovered that her work had been used to train an AI model without her permission, allowing others to generate images in her style. The model was created using Stable Diffusion and DreamBooth, a technique for introducing new subjects to a pretrained text-to-image diffusion model. Mengert expressed discomfort with her name being associated with the model and felt that it was invasive. The incident raises questions about the ethics of using artists' work to train AI models without their consent.

Main themes

• AI-generated art
• copyright and fair use
• artist rights
• ethics of AI use
• impact on human creators
• private use and copyright law
• iteration and improvement in art creation
• regulation of AI-generated art

What commenters say

• The use of artists' work to train AI models without permission is a violation of their copyright and can be seen as a form of theft.
• AI-generated art is not a replacement for human-created art and will not displace artists.
• The distinction between human and artificial intelligence is relevant when considering copyright and fair use.
• There is no legal protection for an artist's style, and AI-generated art that mimics a style is not necessarily a copyright infringement.
• The speed and scale of AI-generated art can have a significant impact on the market and the value of human-created art.
• The concept of private use is complex and can be interpreted differently in the context of copyright law and AI-generated art.
• The use of AI models to generate art can be seen as a form of iteration and improvement, rather than a replacement for human creativity.
• The ethics of using AI models to generate art are not clearly defined and require further discussion and regulation.