Original title: A few keywords can generate a painting with software in ten seconds(Introduction)
Is AI painting a creation? Who is the author? (theme)
Jiefang Daily reporter Jian Gongbo
There are blood-red roses floating on the sea, the curling clouds in the sky are also set off in red, and the end of the sea is a black storm… Recently, a citizen Liu Jin released a “painting” of his own in the circle of friends, which made many friends very shocked.
Liu Jin, 31, has never learned to paint. This “painting” was actually generated by him using software – AI painting websites and tools currently popular on social media have the ability to “turn a sentence into a painting”.
AI painting, who is the author? Although netizens who post “works” on social networks often think that the works they create in “one sentence” belong to them, there are hidden legal risks behind them. And this seemingly powerful function also makes many professional visual art practitioners feel violated: artificial intelligence relies on “learning” massive works to easily “stitch” out images, which seems to lower the threshold of “creation”, but it may allow artistic innovation. Exploration stops.
15 seconds a painting
How does AI paint? The reporter tried the overseas website dreamstudio. After adjusting the frame size and other information, the reporter entered keywords such as “rose”, “clouds” and “river” in the blank column of “dream”, and used “oil painting” as the style. After waiting for more than ten seconds, the AI generated a picture Landscape oil painting in traditional style: pink roses grow on the banks of the river, and clouds under the setting sun are reflected in the river.
Then the reporter tried the mobile phone software AI dream generator. In addition to describing the picture scene, this mobile phone software also has different styles such as Chinese style, cyberpunk style, oil painting style, dark style, etc. It can even simulate the styles of artists such as Van Gogh, Monet, Mucha, and Picasso. After inputting “airship in the dark”, the reporter chose cyberpunk style, and then generated a picture with oil painting style: the object in the picture that looks like a ship and a castle is breaking through the haze, but the background is not like the sky, More like a night street. The generation time of the two works is only ten seconds.
“This technology has actually been used in some professional fields, but this year, many Internet companies tried to deploy, so it appeared in the public eye.” According to Mr. Ye, an industry insider, Disco Diffusion came out in February this year, and DALL-E 2 came out in April. And Midjourney, Stable Diffusion was launched at the end of July, and Baidu released the Chinese version of “Wenxin·Yige” in August.
Who owns the copyright?
The Colorado State Fair Art Competition in the United States was originally a small competition with a prize of only $300, but it caused discussion and even criticism from many well-known painters——
The champion work “Space Opera” is signed “Jason Allen via Midjourney” – Jason Allen (Jason Allen) is the CEO of a game company, and MidJourney is an AI painting software. Jason Allen explained that as a “creator”, he spent a month constantly revising keywords to make MidJourney understand his meaning as accurately as possible, and generated hundreds of works, and finally selected three images for adjustment, The one that participated in the competition was formed, but the voice of opposition was still high.
The reason why the author of the AI painting is important is that it involves a series of copyright attributions and is also closely related to subsequent development. On Wenxin·Yige’s webpage, a large number of works generated by users using the website system are displayed, and products such as mobile phone cases, mugs, canvas bags and other products using these images are simulated, but the above is marked “This painting is not for commercial use”. .
“Compared to the real art practitioners, from getting inspiration to creating real objects, I didn’t even say a word coherently to generate such works. To say that I am the author of this painting, I can’t afford it.” In the circle, Liu Jin repeatedly explained that the painting was “generated with AI painting software” rather than “created” by himself.
So can AI be considered an author? In the opinion of the legal profession, this cannot be determined at present. Article 2 of the Copyright Law stipulates that “the works of Chinese citizens, legal persons or unincorporated organizations, whether published or not, shall enjoy copyright in accordance with this Law.” Some people in the legal profession believe: “This means that copyright can only be enjoyed by civil subjects, but artificial intelligence does not have the capacity of civil subjects, so AI itself cannot be the author of the work.”
The reporter learned that at present, some such websites have made it clear through the “User Agreement” and “Service Use Agreement” that the copyright of the AI painting generated by the website belongs to the website. However, Dreamstudio stated in its FAQ (FAQ) column that the images produced by the website will be completely open source and are copyright-free works in the public domain; other websites stipulate that the ownership of the content generated by the software belongs to the user.
Art Stealing?
According to reports, the basic technology of AI painting is the same as other artificial intelligence, which is to allow the system to deeply learn human works, and to achieve imitation and creation after absorbing a large amount of data and analyzing it.
It is this kind of learning and imitation that makes many video art practitioners worry. “First of all, are the sources and data of artificial intelligence learning legal?” said Wu Xinwei, who is engaged in character creation in an animation company. To solve the problem of plagiarism in reality, we need to look for many details such as composition, image, original elements, etc. “We sometimes even in the process of creation. Hiding some details, some people copied it because they didn’t know, this is the key to our proof of originality. But now that AI smashes a large number of works and then collages, all our previous methods are useless. Obviously they are copied, but How can we defend our rights?”
Wu Xinwei said that in reality, the image of a work may be copied but the style is not, but AI painting makes this copying possible: “Style is the creator’s label, and it is difficult to quantify that it is protected by law. AI painting is a fatal blow to this. .”
“If AI painting has developed a lot, who will spend their whole life exploring?” Mr. Hu, who is engaged in art education, is also worried that if a “not bad” work can be generated in ten seconds, how many people are willing to spend it? Years of thinking, dozens of hours of painting?
However, there are also some relevant practitioners who hold the opposite view. They believe that AI painting can also become a tool for inspiration and auxiliary creation. Mr. Tang, who is engaged in film and television production, believes, “If AI can inspire new inspirations and produce better works, why not do it?” Liu Jin also believes that there is no need to worry too much about AI painting: “The progress of printing has not allowed the Painting disappears, so why worry about AI painting?”