ROUNDUP: Getty Images Bans AI
Plus legitimate uses for AI art and the US wants AI in cars to stop you if you're drunk. It's a lot of AI, I know.
Getty Images told The Verge it no longer lets users upload and sell illustrations generated using text-to-image services like DALL-E or Midjourney. It's the largest image marketplace yet to put in such a policy. Newgrounds, PurplePort and FurAffinity all have similar restrictions. Shutterstock seems to have limited search results for such art.
Getty is concerned about the legal implications. The question of who owns a piece of art generated by an algorithm has not been tested in court. The terms of service of these companies grant ownership to the users in almost all cases. That's' not the issue. Since the machine models are often trained on copyrighted works, there is some concern that their derivative works infringe. Another concern would be if the algorithm generates something in the style of human artist. Especially if it was trained on that artist's work.
Still, this has not been tested in court. Collecting the images for training appears to be protected under the same laws that allows things like indexing for search engines. Less certain is whether training on copyrighted works to make new works is a "fair use." Fair use is a defense, not a right, and a weak one at that, so it's not certain which way a judge would rule.
In the meantime, sites like Getty are playing it safe. Getty will rely on users to identify and report images that violate the rule. It's also working with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity to create filters. One could presume an algorithm could be trained to look for works created by an algorithm. But mostly, Getty is avoiding liability by having the policy.
Things to consider when thinking about this question include the fact that creating the text to make the image come out the way you want is a skill in itself. And a lot of artists are not fighting against text-to-image generators, but using it to improve and speed up their creative process.
So when is it OK and when isn’t it? Should artists be protected from imitation? We probably need new legislation specifically for these cases. My current thought is that something similar to the protection fo the use of your likeness should be in place. If an image is generated speciically to capitalize on looking like the style of another artists, then I think it would be OK to put restrictions on that. What do you think?
Here are some other stories I covered this week.
Meta's Quest 2 has an affordable VR headset competitor in Asia and Europe.
Google announced its Chromecast with Google TV (HD)
US NTSB Recommends Requiring Vehicles To Prevent Drunks from Driving
Nvidia announced the launch of Omniverse Cloud
Upgradeable Framework ChromeBook Launched
Google Lets You Request removal of Personal Info from Search
Instacart Expands Retail Platform Offerings - Smart Carts and More
Animate Still Images of Yourself to Make Video Presentations
Amazon Product Event Coming September 28
AMD 7000 Series Coming Later this Year
Tile QR Code Labels Don’t Need a Battery To Track Items
Text-to-image Generators Hit the Mainstream, including Wide Use by Artists
Paid subscribers, keep scrolling for more details on these topics
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Tom Merritt Tech Newsletter to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.