Deviant Art AI: Artist Feel Shammed

 

Looks like Deviant Art might have jumped the AI broom a little bit too quickly without asking for the consent of their constituents.

According to Arstecnia’s columnist Benj Edwards, Deviant Arts users are annoyed with their art being used in Generative AI model Dream Up, a platform that uses AI-powered text-to-image generator service powered by Stable Diffusion. The problem lies in where and how the newly generated art can be monetized – and how the royalties are tallied.

DreamUp creates novel AI-generated art based on text prompts. Due to its Stable Diffusion roots, DreamUp learned how to generate images by analyzing hundreds of millions of images scraped off sites like DeviantArt and collected into LAION datasets without artists’ permission, a potential irony that some DeviantArt members find problematic.

Some of Deviant’s users took to Twitter to let their voices and concerns be heard:

 

this is how dreamup is being developed. it adds training on non-opt-out artwork on top of the stability diffusion model, which is ALREADY trained using unethically sourced data. they CANT UNLEARN those parts.

this whole discussion is not in good faith unless they address this pic.twitter.com/KnQZerCIol

— svlt ✈️ (@svltart) November 11, 2022

The media backlash caused DreamUp to modify its webpage for patrons.  Hopefully, it’s not too late.

Introducing DreamUp™, an image-generation tool powered by your prompts that allows you to visualize most anything you can DreamUp! DeviantArt DreamUp lets you create AI-art knowing that creators and their work are treated fairly.

 

UPDATE: We heard the community feedback, and now all deviations are automatically labeled as NOT authorized for use in AI datasets.

IMPORTANT:

• DeviantArt did not, does not, and will not use deviations submitted to DeviantArt to add to third-party AI models or training sets, or on DreamUp itself.

• DeviantArt did not consent to third-party technology usage of images on our site, which were used to train AI models. In an effort to combat future unauthorized usage, we have enacted “noai” — an industry-first directive alerting AI models of deviants’ desires to opt out.

• DeviantArt is the only platform giving creators the ability to tell third-party AI datasets and models whether or not their content can be used for training. This is a protection for creators to help them safeguard their content across the web.

• We encourage other platforms who enable creators to publish their work to implement similar protections. We are making our “noai” directive available for use by all.

Generative AI Text to Image models continue to experience growing pains.  I have a feeling that litigation will come soon if regulation is not implemented.