AI ART: Controversial or Innovative?
2023 brought a new frontier of wars against machine as Lensa blew up over the holiday period an AI powered art application where users could upload a few selfies and the AI would generate a professional looking paintwork. The Application worked so well and was so popular it was thrust into many mainstream news sites as it took on viral status.
Lensa AI was reported to be making $US1 Million a day from in app purchases of the art which portrayed it's users in a much much more appealing light. Then come the controversy surrounding the way the application was developing these art works which enters a shady grey area.
As it turns out, the AI bot was learning to develop images from current established artists and not by watching their YouTube Videos but by looking at their images and recreating it in its own interpretation.
Artist Speak Out
From reported news thousands of real art work was uploaded to a data base for the Lensa AI bot to learn from and then it would recreate the styles that were sought as users had the option to select from a number of categories. However, none of this was known until artists started investigating the application and trying it out for themselves.
As soon as artists that expertise in these forms of art started playing around with the application it didn't take long for them to start seeing their own mangled signatures that the AI wasn't able to remove and incorporated it as part of the art work style.
This has led to a major online protest by artists driving a campaign against the use of AI as the artists are seeking compensation for their art work being utilised to create art.
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Is it illegal? Short Answer, No
Intellectual Property Law has been flouted in the recent emergence of AI however, it's not exactly that quite clear cut when it comes to the use of AI generated art. For starters the Lensa AI application isn't reusing actual art pieces and claiming it as it's own.
The AI bot is looking at thousands if not millions of art works by artists and learning how to paint and apply it to a digital medium. This is no difference to what a natural person could do, research and practice then create their own art. However, the AI can do it at a much faster rate than a human.
There is concern that it will make natural human artists redundant and as we saw the application was making $US1 Million a day where artists struggle to make ends meet. But there is also an argument to suggest that it could make artist hand painted art more valuable as hand crafted items tend to be worth more in general.
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The possibilities for Innovation
With an ever growing online decentralised world there is a real need for AI to help power the next stage of innovation especially as the metaverse continues to grow. Current models are limited by financial constraints and digital artist can only develop a set world to a limit. Think Grand Theft Auto, Call of Duty, Fortnight.
These developments take massive amounts of data and time to generate and always exist in the data. Now imagine an AI behind the scenes that could instead of having a set world could at a whim regenerate an entire meta World. Or items and fashion for an online world.
The possibilities are endless with the advancement of AI in this space and what it will mean for our next phase as we enter the Meta.
Image sources provided supplemented by Canva Pro subscription. This is not financial advice and readers are advised to undertake their own research or seek professional financial services.
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