Written by Isabel Cheng on Digilah (Student Tech Research)

My Bio:

Hello, I am Isabel. I am a rising junior in high school at Stamford American International School (SAIS). As AI-generated art rapidly gains popularity and advances, questions such as its ownership, copyright, and how it applies to existing intellectual property frameworks arise. Hence, I want to explore the different perspectives toward AI-generated art and how that should be applied to the law with my research article below.

Section 1: Understanding AI-Generated Art

If you are familiar with the concept of Artificial Intelligence (AI), you know that they are algorithm models that programmers train on extensive databases. They analyze vast amounts of data fed to them and learn patterns so they know how to respond to act. However, the technology itself cannot think on its own or create original ideas.

Likewise, AI-generated artworks are created through machine learning models. The databases of images and artworks they are fed with are often without the permission of their owners. With that said, how is AI-generated art affecting the artistic landscape, and where does this technology stand in terms of authorship and the legal status of AI as a creator?

Section 2: Popular Generative AI Websites

Let’s talk about some of the most popular AI generative websites. First off, is Midjourney. Launched in early 2022, it is one of the most recognized AI image/art generators. Though it has a $10-20 USD monthly subscription fee, it is known for giving the best quality pictures fast, which has attracted a substantial user base.

Midjourney Showcase Page (Source: Midjourney Feed)

Leonardo AI, also launched in 2022, has a relatively beginner-friendly interface along with refined tools for paying professionals too. Its free version operates on a token system that resets on a daily basis, allowing users to generate images based on prompts. It produces images relatively well based on the prompts, and compared to Midjourney, it is more customizable because it has a larger variety of style options.

Leonardo AI Home Page (Source: Leonardo AI)

Ideogram, another AI generator that is gaining traction, also caters to a wide audience. It has a range of pricing plans catering to users of different needs. It has a free version where you are allowed up to 10 prompts a day. Its consistent performance in text-to-image generation makes it a reliable choice for many users.

Ideogram Explore Page (Source: Ideogram AI)

Dalle-E 3 is another popular image-generative AI in the market, particularly in AI artworks like drawings and paintings. Though it is still not fully developed, you can access it via ChatGPT Plus.

Notably, Dall-E 3 is one of the few AI image generators that states explicitly on its website that it is designed to refuse requests for images mimicking living artists’ styles. They also allow creators to opt their art out of future training of their image generation models.

However, challenges remain in ensuring artists receive recognition. Is a fake death certificate enough to make Dall-E 3 accept requests for mimicking a living artist’s style? What about the artists who are unaware that their work is being used to train AI models?

With that said, let us dive into the growing concerns about the unauthorized usage of artists’ art styles to train image-generating models.

Dall-E 3 Index Page (Source: OpenAI)

Section 3: Artist Recognition and Copyright Challenges in the Age of AI

Since 2023, the advent of AI generation tools has prompted many to be curious and experiment with them. This includes artists, and an increasing number of them are utilizing these tools to enhance their own work, with some feeding their own artworks into AI systems, so that after inputting a prompt, they are able to produce a new piece of art in their own unique style, all in a matter of minutes.

One wouldn’t exist without the other, and this raises questions about the relationship between traditional and AI-generated art.

In Singapore, the Copyright Act protects original creative work. The owner who made an original art piece is usually automatically given a copyright, and they are granted the right to reproduce, distribute, and display the work.

However, when it comes to work generated by AI, a critical question arises: Does the creator of the AI, the user of the AI, the work of artists who trained the AI, or the AI itself hold the copyright? The existing framework primarily addresses human authorship, leaving a grey area for AI-generated work.

As of now, the Singapore law does not explicitly recognize AI as the creator, which complicates ownership and copyright claims to their generated artwork.

Furthermore, Singapore’s legal system emphasizes that copyright protection is only given if the work is original. Since AI-generated art is often trained on databases with existing art, it raises questions about whether the art it generates meets the originality requirement. This could limit the ability of artists to claim copyright over AI-generated work that they incorporate their style or elements into.

As Singapore and countries around the world navigate these complexities, there is a growing consensus that intellectual property laws need to be updated to better fit the world today. Policymakers and legal experts should work together with artists and AI experts to shape a new legal landscape that protects creativity and authorship rights in this new age of AI.

Section 4: Protecting Artists – Tools and Views

Artists are increasingly turning to AI-generative-art poisoning software such as Nightshade, Glaze, Have I Been Trained, and more to protect their work from being used in unauthorized AI training.

These tools allow creators to alter the pixels of their artworks that are imperceptibly different from human eyes but will get picked up by machine learning algorithms and act as a poisoned data sample, resulting in deformed outputs from AI models.

Glaze More Info Page (Source: The University of Chicago)

However, the development of all these poisoning tools is not perfect, and most end up compromising the quality of the artwork. Additionally, some artists view the anti-poisoning software as another unnecessary step, given that another training model could come out to invalidate this approach.

Furthermore, another perspective on AI-generated art is that there is no difference between AI learning and an artist. Most artists take inspiration from other artists anyway and make their own art as a derivative of that.

AI needs artists, but if you look at human history, modern art is built upon thousands and thousands of years of art from different cultures across the globe. Artists need artists too, suggesting that AI could be seen as an extension of this creative process.

Contrary to that though, another valid argument is the idea that AI art is theft? It’s a common consensus that it takes at least 10,000 hours to learn a new skill. Most artists invest years practicing and honing their craft, while all companies do is download datasets of millions of artworks and use them to train their algorithm models.

With that, the models can then make combinations from what they “learned” and instantly generate pieces, often profiting from it through consumers without having done anything artistic themselves.

This situation is unfair to artists, as no human can feasibly digest billions of images and create amalgamations of all of them in seconds. This could lead to a culture of complacency, ultimately stifling creativity and innovation. It is concerning to consider that all “new” and “original” art could end in the next few years if lawmakers do not adequately protect artists’ rights.

However, a lot of this issue involves how AI interacts with the current intellectual copyright laws, further driving the need for policymakers to amend them.

As previously noted, law and legal experts should work together with artists and AI experts to consider adding something like an AI Commission system or requiring AI developers to get permission/credit from artists whose art is used in training datasets.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the rise of AI-generated art is both an opportunity and a challenge for artists and the legal system. Especially with the evolution of AI technology, education, and awareness are crucial for both artists and lawmakers to navigate this new landscape.

Legal frameworks need to reform and adapt so that artists, AI, AI creators, and users get fair recognition for their contributions. As we move forward, it becomes clearer that the ambiguity surrounding artistic authorship around the world has to be changed, fostering an environment where creativity can thrive alongside technological advancement.

References

https://docs.midjourney.com/docs/plans https://leonardo.ai/

https://ideogram.ai/t/explore

https://www.midjourney.com/showcase

https://openai.com/about

https://openai.com/index/dall-e-3

https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu

https://dezgo.com/text2image/sdxl

https://lawgazette.com.sg/feature/generative-ai

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/ai-art-copyright-law-artificial-intelligence-authorship-originality-3339396#:~:text=In%20Singapore%2C%20the%20law%20holds,concerns%20around%20protecting%20their%20work.

Most asked questions

Which are the commonly used AI-generative-art poisoning softwares?

How can I access Dalle-E 3?

Dalle-E 3 is a popular image-generative AI in the market. Though it is still not fully developed, you can access it via ChatGPT Plus.

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Midjourney

Ideogram

Leonardo AI

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Written by : Ajit Padmanabh on Digilah (Tech Thought Leadership)

Introduction

There is a palpable sense of skepticism in many with regards to the promise of inclusivity in Web3. Many believe that all talk of decentralization is a mere hype and is not implementable.

When one looks at the Metaverse players across various layers and that the metaverse market is projected to be worth $12Tn by 2030, the values of pay-parity, equity and inclusivity need to be lived in and by the Metaverse players.

Are there companies working on inclusivity and equity in places like Africa and economically backward countries?

Are there real possibilities to generate revenue and employment for the deprived or underprivileged classes of our society, with Web3 technologies?

The internet had made similar promises in the beginning and the utopian dream died within years of its inception. If we look at the internet today, there are pockets of improvement in revenue generation in rural and tribal populations but largely, it has skewed more, making the privileged a little more privileged.

Hence, considering the promise of Web3 in decentralization and self-sufficiency in revenues, this article attempts to provide scenarios across various layers of Metaverse as depicted below, to make this utopian ideal a reality.

The Artisan Community and Indian Craft

As an ancient civilization that has birthed many cultures and has seen numerous migrations and invasions, India has a rich heritage in the field of arts.

Craft as a term was historically limited to “goods worked by hand” but now includes a broader canvas – all things art, like Music, Dance, Painting, Sculptures, Textiles etc. Even if we limit Indian craft to “Handicrafts” across states, the variety in art form and media is unparalleled.

The Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH) is a nodal agency for promoting exports of handicrafts from India to various destinations of the world and projecting India’s image abroad as a reliable supplier of high-quality handicrafts goods & services.

The Handicrafts exports during the year 2021-22 was Rs.33253.00 Crores (US$4459.76 Million) registering a growth of 29.49% in rupee terms & 28.90% in dollar terms over previous year¹. While the growth is promising especially from a tourism perspective, this may have a miniscule impact on the overall rating of India as the Vishwaguru.

Revenue Generation for Artisans, while preserving the Art Heritage

The fast-paced Digital Age is only going to get faster with Industry 4.0. With technologies like VR/AR, 3D-Scanning and 3D-Modeling, 3D-Printing as well as Web 3.0 constructs (and buzzwords) like the NFT, Metaverse and Blockchain, the craft Industry has all the components aligned for that leapfrog moment.

A lot of artisan communities and tribal art communities in India are now extinct and some on the verge of extinction – this is a challenge that uniquely presents itself to us as an opportunity if we leverage the technologies mentioned above.

Industry 4.0 terms Technology as a driver of change, and not merely an enabler. We should look to harness this driver for Indian Craft and the numerous communities associated with it.

There is a need to look at Indian Craft holistically, including all forms of fine art and performing arts, compounded by technology and tourism. We Illustrate these possibilities by taking the famous Channapatna Toys from Karnataka, as an example. They are protected as a Geographical Indication (GI) under the World Trade Organisation administered by the Government of Karnataka.

Channapatna Toys could be put up on an artisan marketplace in the Metaverse. The artisan would be able to directly engage in selling goods in 3D and voice-interact with consumers worldwide. With technologies like 3D-scanning and 3D-printing, consumers worldwide would be able to see, touch and feel these products via Haptic technologies and also view the story of the artisan behind it.

Such multi-sensory experiences are disruptive and could help consumers in accelerating their buying decisions, something the Internet has not been able to achieve.

Consumers will not only get to pick up local artisans’ produce but also engage with them and know more about our culture, traditions and heritage from their standpoint. The same product, once digitized, could be converted to limited edition NFTs during special seasons. The underlying financial technology could be powered by Digital Ledger Technology (DLT) or Blockchain, keeping the transaction decentralized, bereft of middle-men.

Imagine the access for the artisans to the entire Indian Diaspora across the world and imagine the ease of access and purchase for the consumers, at large. This will also help the Artisans transfer knowledge to the next generation, a large number of who are looking for better economic opportunities in cities.

As mentioned earlier, this is the main reason why India has lost a lot of tribal and native art. With metaverse and ancillary technologies, the hope is that we will be able to reverse this trend and preserve art heritage for posterity while making it economically viable for the artisans at scale, something that is unknown and unprecedented in today’s times.

Early traction in such technology-driven soft power can certainly propel India onto the world stage and make traditional Indian artisans global celebrities, giving them the much needed recognition and respect.

Conclusion

Indian Heritage and Culture is multi-layered, with each layer having the capability to catapult India’s soft-power quotient. One could experience it through ancient monuments, scriptures, textiles, crafts, music, dance, food, sports, folktales and many more.

There is a need to look at each of these layers from a Technology and Tourism standpoint, the intent being to preserve and propagate Heritage and Cultures of the world, including the most backward communities.

If deployed across other art-forms like paintings, pottery, sculptures, textiles, and even artists like musicians and dancers, Artisans worldwide have tremendous potential to earn from a global market without boundaries.

References:

https://indiaeducationdiary.in/piyush-goyal-union-minister-of-commerce-industry-consumer-affairs-food-public-distribution-and-textiles-govt-of-india-graces-handicrafts-export-award-function-as-chief-guest-and-gives-away/

Most searched question

Why do we need Web3?

Is Web3 virtual reality?

Are Web 3.0 and the metaverse the same thing?

Most searched queries

Web3 social impact

Web3 blockchain

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