by It’s been a year for the art of artificial intelligence, where tools like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion have made headlines for their terribly impressive text-to-image capabilities. But while impressive most of the time, the art of AI is also somewhat vague when it comes to ethics, and the latest viral app is proving to be the most controversial one ever.
Lensa has been topping app store charts for the past few days with its ‘Magic Avatar’ feature that creates painterly AI selfies that your social media feed is probably churning out at right now. But many are concerned that technology based on Stable Difusion is collaborating with artists’ work. (New to the art of AI? Check out the guide on how to use the DALL-E 2.)
Many worry that Stable Diffusion takes samples of the work of existing artists to reveal their AI-generated imagery. We’ve already seen some alarming examples of this, with the style of Korean artist Kim Jung Gi being blatantly copied by artificial intelligence. But what really matters in Lensa’s case is that the app allegedly monetizes the work of other artists.
Indeed, while its base, Stable Diffusion, is free, Lensa costs £36.99 per year to use. It’s understandably frustrating for creators to see how the app spit out artworks with evidence (below) that the original artist’s signature is still visible.
I’m trimming these for privacy reasons/because I’m not trying to call out to anyone. These are all Lensa portraits, where the crushed remains of an artist’s signature are still visible. This is all that’s left of the signature of one of the many artists he’s played with.A 🧵 https://t.co/0lS4WHmQfW pic.twitter.com/7GfDXZ22s1December 6, 2022
If you have been playing with the Lensa App to make AI art “magic avatars” lately, please know that these images are created with stolen artwork via the Stable Diffusion model. pic.twitter.com/VGrrECYVn5December 2, 2022
Friends. This Lensa app that everyone uses uses the Stable Diffusion model. It uses the most insidious Laion database with millions of stolen artwork, medical photos, and stolen/illegal private content. Please beware of these.December 1, 2022
This certainly isn’t the first AI art discussion we’ve seen in recent months. From AI art winning first prize in an art competition, to Getty banning AI-generated images from its library due to copyright concerns, and people using tools to copy certain artists’ styles, technology is causing all sorts of inconvenience online. Indeed, even Adobe has recently offered a message for creatives concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence art.
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