Artists fed up with AI-image generators use Mickey Mouse to goad copyright lawsuits


tl;dr artists are trying to shoot themselves in both feet by giving megacorps stronger copyright power

Artists are pushing back on imagery generated by artificial intelligence (AI) by using the technology to create content containing copyrighted Disney characters.


Since the introduction of AI systems including DALL·E 2, Lensa AI, and Midjourney, artists have argued that such tools steal their work, given that they’ve been fed an endless supply of their pieces as inputs. Many such tools, for example, can be told to create imagery in the style of a particular artist.

The current legal consensus, much to the chagrin of many artists, concludes that AI-generated art is in the public domain and therefore not copyrighted. In the terms of service for systems such as DALL·E 2, created by the research laboratory OpenAI, users are told that no images are copyrighted despite being owned by OpenAI.

In response to concerns over the future of their craft, artists have begun using AI systems to generate images of characters including Disney’s Mickey Mouse. Given Disney’s history of fierce protection over its content, the artists are hoping the company takes action and thus proves that AI art isn’t as original as it claims.


Over the weekend, Eric Bourdages, the Lead Character Artist on the popular video game Dead by Daylight, urged his followers to create and sell merchandise using the Disney-inspired images he created using Midjourney.

“Someone steal these amazing designs to sell them on Mugs and T-Shirts, I really don’t care, this is AI art that’s been generated,” Bourdages wrote. “Legally there should be no recourse from Disney as according to the AI models TOS these images transcends copyright and the images are public domain.”
Bourdages tweet quickly racked up more than 37,000 likes and close to 6,000 shares.

In numerous follow-up tweets, Bourdages generated images of other popular characters from movies, video games, and comic books, including Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, Mario, and Pikachu.

“More shirts courtesy of AI,” he added. “I’m sure, Nintendo, Marvel, and DC won’t mind, the AI didn’t steal anything to create these images, they are completely 100% original.”

Many users appeared to agree with Bourdages’ somewhat sarcastic interpretation, sharing T-shirts they created online that feature the AI images.
Bourdages later clarified that he had no intention of profiting off of the images, but noted that Midjourney had done so by charging him to use their service.
“Midjourney is a paid subscription btw, so technically the only one that profited off of this image is them,” he said. “I have no intentions of profiting off of or claiming any of these images. They belong to the AI, MJ, and the public, my contribution is that of a simple google search.”
Just two days after sharing the images, however, Bourdages stated on Twitter that he had suddenly lost his access to Midjourney.

“Update – I was refunded and lost access to Midjourney,” he said. “They are no longer profiting off of these images and I assume didn’t want copyrighted characters generated. I hope this thread created discussion around AI and where data is sourced.”
In further remarks, Bourdages reiterated his primary goal when creating the images.
“The obvious issue I am opposed to in my thread is the theft of human art,” he said. “People’s craftsmanship, time, effort, and ideas are being taken without their consent and used to create a product that can blend it all together and mimic it to varying degrees.”

The Daily Dot reached out to both Bourdages and Midjourney to inquire about the images but did not receive a reply by press time. Disney did not respond to questions either regarding whether it would attempt to claim copyright over AI-generated imagery.
The issue surrounding AI art has already led to widespread protest and pushback from the art community. Just this week, artists on the art-hosting platform ArtStation began uploading identical images en masse that featured the caption “NO TO AI GENERATED IMAGES.”
Given just how new the technology is, it remains unclear what guidelines, if any, will be created to balance the rights of artists against the ever-expanding capabilities of AI.
 
What an actual fucking retard.
You can hear the smarminess.
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I'm sure that these same dipshits used to smuggly tell coal miners and steel workers to get with the times and learn to code, confident that their artistic jobs would never be threatened.

You get what you fucking deserve.
They're all city idiots who think food magically appears in a supermarket, completely unaware that it comes from farms
 
They REALLY don't want Disney to do this. It's either going to fuck them over by giving Disney and corpos stronger protections (bye bye, commissions of fanart), or AI generation becomes officially protected for reasons of AI development. Disney may try and litigate, but there's also a lot of money behind AI R&D, and setting important precedent like this has the potential of making it to the SC.
Oh, even then, this is still going to fuck over professional artists for many corporations eventually. Disney owns the copyright, so they would still be allowed to generate their own proprietary art. As this gets more sophisticated, do they really think that Disney wouldn't be interested in cutting their art departments when they could do it much more cheaply?
I'm unsure if artists are retarded or what. Imagine if artists tried to goad Disney into suing Adobe back when Photoshop came out because people used it to make art of Mickey Mouse or whatever. That's what we are looking at right now.
 
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I just drew micky mouse in ms paint and I'm releasing it to the public domain. Clearly this means Disney needs to shut down microsoft

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Disney wants to go after people selling unauthorized merchandise for the most part, not people drawing Disney characters. And even then you can probably find some Disney knockoff crap on Etsy. This idiot is goading people to make t-shirts and mugs, but there's already a million images you could do that with. Adding more to the pile makes no difference.

Maybe Disney would go after an AI-animated film made with their characters, but that's a lot more work.
 
They REALLY don't want Disney to do this. It's either going to fuck them over by giving Disney and corpos stronger protections (bye bye, commissions of fanart), or AI generation becomes officially protected for reasons of AI development. Disney may try and litigate, but there's also a lot of money behind AI R&D, and setting important precedent like this has the potential of making it to the SC.
The retards doing this shit aren't smart enough to think that far ahead. They're like the journalists shitting their pants at Elon Musk now that their cabal isn't protected from consequences.
 
But that doesn't even make sense. Disney owns the intellectual property rights to Mickey Mouse, not a specific image of Mickey Mouse. It doesn't matter if you drew the picture yourself, they own the rights to the character.

This is different from what AI art is doing, because the worst they do is take a bunch of your images and make a new image using your style basically. You can't copyright an artistic style, and unless you own the IP rights for Big Titty Anime Girl #8579 that they generated, you can't do shit about it. Seethe.
 
This is really cool. Would be hilarious to see the french cuck's reaction to this. The whole artstation spamming no AI thing has made a nice list of artists to unfollow on there. The fact that they are threatened by AI should be a driving force for them to improve, since AI can't do detailed specifics. But nope, just throw a tard rage.

this is an artist that used AI as a base, this is what they should be doing, adapting to the new tools.

It's not even good 3D art. It's boring to look at and the colors are eye-searingly bright for what they're trying to portray.
Its a start, and apparently it just uses the 2d models and some fancy AI stuff to generate 3d from that.
 
First, This guy doesn't know what fair use is. I doubt he understands his own legal rights and the fact that he's trying to force Disney to crackdown is hilarious.
I was a useful paralegal before became a worthless artist and I can tell you with 100% certainty, he has never read a single TOS in his life. A lawyer looking for a freebie could simply roll up and say " Hey, this guy is trying to defame/libel OpenAi by blatantly violating their TOS", of course then this entire thing would be tied up in the tort process but if OpenAi wants to strike back, they need to hit these losers where it hurts.

Second, he's ironically proving the Ai Defenders correct. You have to go out of your way to do it. No Ai generator is going to give you Mickey Mouse, unless you tell it to give you Mickey Mouse or specifically design it to give you Mickey Mouse. Ai is just like a gun. You can load it up with anything you want, you just have to be responsible when you pull the trigger.

Third, leave it to a jealous cuck to ignore the fact that Etsy exists. Thousands of unauthorized images and products made every day. Every hour. Every second. Tattoo Artists would go out of business. Imagine how shitty Kid's birthday parties would be if they had to pay for an official Disney Mascot to show up? Rather than Speidoraroman and Nora the Mapper? Again. Leave it to a narrow minded artist to not see the entire scope of their tantrum.
 
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