{"id":207893,"date":"2022-12-15T13:26:58","date_gmt":"2022-12-15T12:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=207893"},"modified":"2025-07-01T20:15:39","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T03:15:39","slug":"is-ai-really-stealing-artwork","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/is-ai-really-stealing-artwork\/","title":{"rendered":"Is AI really stealing artwork?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

We were warned about AI<\/a>. So many experts tried to warn us that we didn\u2019t understand the implications and consequences of letting innovations<\/a> like this roam free. But, we didn\u2019t listen. We knew better even though we knew nothing of the deeper mechanisms<\/strong> at work under the blanket term \u2018machine learning.\u2019 Now, we have to negotiate a world where machines are producing art in a way that used to be unique to our species, such as Lensa<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest scandal within the AI industry<\/a> is, of course, the business with Lensa. Lensa is a utility that basically functions as the neat and tidy front end of the Stable Diffusion innovation. This \u2018app\u2019 generates images of you based on those you upload onto the system – for a small fortune, of course. The app is currently estimated to be generating $1 million a day<\/strong> from in-app purchases and has gone viral as a way to stand out on social media.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, there\u2019s an issue with how the artworks that Lensa produces are created, if you can even call them art. These are simply images generated by a machine learning system<\/a> based on prompts it has been given. This is not an intelligent creature expressing itself through artistic media. That is what art is. This is not that. The core issue is that the app not only generates images based on prompts but can do so by appropriating <\/strong>the styles of virtually any artist.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The issue goes deeper still with an assertion on Twitter by @LaurenIpsum<\/a> that the original artists\u2019 signatures are sometimes still visible in the AI-generated artwork. In a recent post, Lauren said: \u2018I\u2019m cropping these for privacy reasons\/because I\u2019m not trying to call out any one individual. These are all Lensa portraits where the mangled remains of an artist\u2019s signature is still visible. That\u2019s the remains of the signature of one of the multiple artists it stole from.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stole is an incredibly divisive word, but in this context, we\u2019d say it fits. This isn\u2019t merely using another artist\u2019s style to evoke a particular emotion, feeling, or response from the viewer<\/strong>. This seems to be the direct theft of literal artworks, complete with signatures, in some cases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other issue that keeps coming up is the fact that these fake AI-generated artworks<\/a> are showing up on exchanges like ArtStation<\/strong>, sites that true artists use to showcase their talent and try to make a name for themselves. With these sites being overrun by digital imitations created by \u2018artificial intelligence\u2019 and a few prompts fed into a machine learning system, actual professional artists who have dedicated years, thousands of dollars, and inordinate amounts of energy to their craft, are getting lost in the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art is not something that any species just creates out of boredom<\/a>. The way that humans create art, it\u2019s more often than not a way to comment on situations of the past or present, inspire reactions<\/a> in other people, or express our own emotions in a way that still leaves a little to each individual imagination. Art is inherently part of the human experience<\/strong>, and to recognize and legitimize these so-called artificial intelligences<\/a> and their ability to \u2018create\u2019 art would be a grave mistake and a delegitimization of the human spirit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We were warned about AI. So many experts tried to warn us that we didn\u2019t understand the implications and consequences of letting innovations like this roam free. But, we didn\u2019t listen. We knew better even though we knew nothing of the deeper mechanisms at work under the blanket term \u2018machine learning.\u2019 Now, we have to … Continue reading “Is AI really stealing artwork?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9222,"featured_media":207900,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-207893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322751,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207893\/revisions\/322751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207893"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=207893"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=207893"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=207893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}