We are in unsetteling times. AI is stealing art from creators to give away for free to anyone. Here are some notes from Rebecca Blake’s presentation, Advocacy In the Age of AI, at ICON12 the Illustration Conference on July 12th, 2024. I recommend inviting Rebecca Blake to be your next speaker.

Generative AI is causing artist advocates to rethink the fundamentals of how we advocate for our rights: the right to control our work, be treated fairly, and protect our integrity.—Rebecca Blake

Advocacy
in the age
of aI

by Rebecca Blake
(The image here was made by a real human, Asahi Nagata.)

ICON12 Conference Art by Asahi Nagata

Image Overload

“In 150 YEARS, about 15 billion photos have been taken.

In ONE YEAR, over 150 billion AI IMAGES have been generated.”
source: Everypixel

AI Image Generators

+34 million AI images generated per day.
31% think GEN AI art is as good as human-created.
34% think AI-generated art is better than human-created.
36% of gaming studios use AI image generators.

Where do these images come from?

Computers are NOT creative, humans are. These images ARE MADE BY HUMANS. Or they are derivative creations of images originally made by humans. The images that AI uses to generate new images are stolen from artists’ online portfolios and social media posts. Those images were not taken with consent. We artists are putting our images online because the industry demands that we have an online presence to get hired for work.

Advocacy in the Age of AI

“A letter was sent to each of these ORG’s to insist AI NOT be allowed into their competitions:

Society of Illustrators
American Illustration
Communication Arts
Spectrum Fantastic Art
3x3
Creative Quarterly
Society of Illustrators, LA
World Illustration Awards
Applied Arts Awards
Circle Foundation For The Arts
AIGA
National Cartoonist Society
The Norman Rockwell Museum

Follow these artists, who are in the trenches against AI on X (formerly Twitter):

Karla Ortiz @kortizart
Reid Southen @Rahll
Corey Brickley @CoreyBrickley
Neil Turkwitz @neilturkewitz

Copyright Law Explained

https://copyrightalliance.org/education/copyright-law-explained/

Court

These artists have taken Midjourney, DeviantArt, and StabilityA.I. to court, suing them for copyright infringement:

Karla Ortiz
Sarah Andersen
Kelly McKernan
Hawke Southworth
Grzegorz Ruthkowski
Gregory Manchess
Gerald Brom
Jingna Zhang
Julia Kaye
Adam Ellis

In court they must prove:

Are the Gen AI outputs sufficiently similar to the original artwork?
Is using images for machine learning a fair use?
Were copies of images made in creating the training dataset?

How to Protect Your Copyright

Register all your art at https://www.copyright.gov/registration

Glaze: https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/

Nightshade your artwork: https://youtu.be/r7FQIjBIUVk

Carl Seibert Solutions (links)

Go to this website for tons more information: https://www.carlseibert.com/guild/

Embed Your Metadata

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/image-license-metadata

“When you specify image metadata, Google Images can show more details about the image, such as who the creator is, how people can use an image, and credit information. For example, providing licensing information can make the image eligible for the Licensable badge, which provides a link to the license and more detail on how someone can use the image.”–Google