Greg Rutkowski, a digital artist known for his surreal style, opposes AI art but his name and style have been frequently used by AI art generators without his consent. In response, Stable Diffusion removed his work from their dataset in version 2.0. However, the community has now created a tool to emulate Rutkowski’s style against his wishes using a LoRA model. While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5. The debate highlights the blurry line between innovation and infringement in the emerging field of AI art.
> One human artist can, over a life time, learn from a few artists to inform their style.
> These AI setups […] ALL the art from ALL the artists
So humans are slow and inefficient, what’s new?
First the machines replaced hand weavers, then ice sellers went bust, all the calculators got sacked, now it’s time for the artists.
> There is no ethical stance for letting billion dollar tech firms hoover up all the art ever created to the try and remix it for profit.
We stand on the shoulders of generations of unethical stances.
“other people were bad so I should be bad to.”
Cool.
Yes, which is why we should try to do better.