No to Unregulated AI Generated Imagery ⁴

In light of Artstation’s most recent manoeuvre, several flaws have emerged from their supposed solution. Firstly, the “NoAI” tag is not a default setting, and is only applicable to imagery that is yet to be posted. Most image generators have already scraped pre-existing artworks, so from where this new tag has an impact is rather ambiguous. Will any algorithms know to discard data, upon noticing the tag on an artwork that they previously scraped? Will legal action be taken by those whose works have been (and continue to be) used without consent?

I’m also curious as to whether Artstation, Twitter, Instagram or other social media platforms have communicated with AI devs to ensure that their code respects the tags. Evidence of such, I am yet to see.

Additionally, the USCO has decreed that: ‘an image generated through artificial intelligence lacks […] the human authorship necessary [for] copyright,’ and that it will not register machine generated works that are contrived ‘without any creative input or intervention from a human author.’ Ergo, AI generated art has no IP and thus no owner.

This explicitly contravenes Artstation’s first Community Content Guideline; ‘the works on your portfolio should be the work that you created’. Posting artwork that you have commissioned from an algorithm infringes upon this ruling.

This edge to the discourse is particularly concerning, given that Artstation’s disregard for this fact will have a direct impact on our ability to compete for work.