The ethics of generative art
Take a look at this ad that I pulled together in about 20 minutes. It is nothing more than a promotion for the “mythical” Mountain Coffee Co. The background image, created in Photoshop, reinforces the brand and the text and coffee cup with logo, created in Artboard Studio, also supports the brand. I don’t want to talk about the aesthetics of this ad. They are unimportant. Instead, I want to talk about the ethics of this ad because it isn’t exactly what you think you are seeing.
The background image was created using Adobe’s Generative Fill AI in the Photoshop Beta. I created it using a technique Rob de Winter, a Photoshop genius, presented on Twitter and which, subsequently went viral almost immediately. You can see the demo here.
My background image started off with a Photoshop paint brush to fill in the grass, the sky and to draw a stick tree.
Then , following de Winter’s technique, I applied a Quick Mask with a 70% grey fill.
Now comes the fun part, I entered the following prompt in the resulting dialog box: “ Summer mountain meadow landscape with tree”, clicked the Generate button and …“voila” Pretty slick! It may be slick, but is it ethical because it is only a matter of time before images from this technique start popping up in apps, websites and other media.
Here’s the fundamental question to ponder: Is the original creative artwork being sold the primitive color fills with a stick tree or the Generated result?
As an author, this could potentially open me to legal action because I assign all rights to the book’s images, called Figures, to my publisher. When I create a course for LinkedIn Learning the same thing applies. Your initial reaction might be, “Of course they get the rights to reproduce the image.” I am not so sure.
The actual original creative work was something my 6 year-old grandson regularly turns out in his kindergarten art class. The Generative Fill, in this case, is composed of bits and pieces of images pulled in from a variety of images contained in Adobe Stock. None of which I own. Adobe, thanks to its sense of ethics and morality, is wrestling with this very issue. With Firefly, content credentials are embedded into the file. The Photoshop Beta is a bit different in that enabling content credentialing is voluntary and they make it very clear none of this can be used for commercial work. They are also wrestling with a similar policy for Lightroom. Many applications simply scrape the web and “Here you go.”
Ethically, I don’t see how the rights to my Generative image can be sold. The original artwork was composed of fills and a stick tree. Show that your your client and you are fired or thrown out of the office within milliseconds. Show them the Generative image and they love it. So you made $500 for 20 minutes work. Sweet piece of business if you can get it.
The inverse to this is something my professional photographer friend, Jim Babbage, has recently created.
I know the original image, shown on the left , is the original because I was the guy paddling at the back of the canoe during the trip to the shoreline. Jim wanted to “jazz it up” a bit and used Adobe Firefly to create the images shown in the middle and to the right. In this case, Jim does indeed own the rights to the image and can “jazz it up” as he sees fit to make it a more interesting photograph.
Eventually, though, you are going to encounter a client who asks, “Do you own the rights to this image? “ Is it ethical to say you do if you started with a stick tree?
To me, this is the nub of this whole Generative AI focus: Can you really answer “Yes” if the image is composed of bits and pieces of images scraped from the web or image catalogues? Can you really claim ownership and assign rights if the original, creative work is a couple of fills and a stick tree? I think the answer is no and I suspect the legal profession is in for some interesting times.
Further Learning:
Jim Babbage on using Adobe Firefly
Behance
Rob de Winter Photoshop Technique
AI Generated Art:The Ethical Implications and Debates
Shaibu Samuel
Becoming Human: Artificial Intelligence Magazine
The Ethics of AI Art
Dex Parra, Scott R. Stroud
The University of Texas at Austin,
Center for Media Engagement.
Moody College of Communications
The Risks of Generative AI
Kathy Baxter, Yoav Schlesinger
Harvard Business Review
Risks and ethical considerations of generative AI
Michelle Lee, Lukas Kruger,
Deloitte
New ChatGPT Lawsuits May Be Start of AI’s Legal Sh-tstorm
Rolling Stone
Content Credentials
Adobe
Content Credentials in Lightroom
Adobe
