Tomorrow a New Year starts… for my new year’s resolution I will share an image on social media everyday in 2023; some new images (mostly on Sundays) and some old images. This will hopefully help me work thru somethings I’ve been thinking about, especially with all of the recent discoveries around Image Scraping from AI Generated Art I have been seriously debating about Deleting my Images from Deviantart, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and any other potential scraping ground for AI Art...
I’m only thinking about keeping our website: cacklencomics.com
What do you feel about the issue of the data mining of millions of artists’ work?
It is true, that we artists would like to have as wide of an audience as possible, and this is why we share our work in the first place… but I’ve seen many artists leave and/or take out many of their images already… and I wonder if this should be the path I should take…
Do you think any of these sites can be trusted? Will my images be missed if erase them all? I guess I’ll decide in this next year… Happy New Year if we don’t talk again! - Ryan
I don't think there's a simple answer here,... we don't want people making money by plagiarising our work, but isn't all art derivative? Do we want to get into the same situation as the music scene where artists lose rights to their work because someone can argue they did something similar once?
AI artwork is one of those things that astonishes the first time you see it. It can seemingly generate quite unique work using some unknown method. But is this different enough to a person copying elemens of someone else's work and altering it to suit their own needs. Would you want to be sued because something you drew has similar elements to somebody or some company's artwork with big pockets and a litigious nature?
As a humble artist, we know we'd lose out to the bigger company's who could make copyright strikes, similar to what's happening on Youtube if anyone plays music that might be similar to anything in a record company's catalogue. Terrified that they'll get sued themselves, they even made tools to help these guys find these "infringements" and take back any revenue and/or block any video that they see fit.
As for social media, well you could argue there's not a lot of point keeping it there anyway. Extra traffic is limited these days unless you pay for views. doesn't matter that you're offering it for free and it's helping fll their system with content, it's all about ad revenue. So, yeah, I'm with you there. Leave them with their fake news and videos of guys getting kicked in the nuts. It seems that people are more interested in pictures of their meals anyway.
Personally, I think it is the case (and always has) that you lose control over anything you put on the internet. If you don't like that, then sure take it down. I've seen pro cartoonists only keep X number of months on the web... seems like a good compromise.
Great topic, and it'll be interesting to see what happens.
Thanks for the well thought out comment! I am on a daily rollercoaster on this topic. Putting only 30 comics is actually pretty smart… let’s see what happens! Thanks again for all the comments!
I looked at your comments on Reddit,.. I'd be interested to see instances of your copyright violations. I suppose that's the thing.. until it hits you it's very easy to take a blasé approach to it. I understand and have similar concerns.
I would imagine the only option you would have is approach each user of the image rather than the tool that was used to steal it. Is that what the AI does, tell you these images may be from copyrighted sources? (if so, then that's a dodgy approach, they should say where so you could obtain permission if you want to do something commercial with it)
I wonder what would happen if these AI engines pointed at commercial artwork sources?... it didnt go well in the music world when Ray Parker Junior decided to re-use a catchy bass line. But what if he'd taken it from a free source like MySpace (if they'd had it back then?)
I think the essence of what you are saying is correct though... we have another potential instance of law not keeping up with technology and it's unclear whether the current copyright laws are sufficient.
Difficult aint it?.. why can't they operate like one of those stock image sites. Seems like a class-action suit waiting to happen.
Yeah for sure, right now I am a little bit more level headed than when I first found out about my images, which btw, you can check if your images are on the datasets by going to haveibeentrained.com (there is a youtube video by the creator where you can see him talk and he seems like a legit guy to me - the channel is named Spawning) and I’ve found that uploading the images works best. Many people I’ve spoken to and made aware about this (most unknown artists) find their images on the datasets… I think that since I’m in the US, copyright works different than in other countries, like some people have told me that in their country, if an image is public, then it is considered ‘public domain’ and that’s not the case for us here in the US (and if I’m not mistaken in the UK and EU as well??) … it’s a very interesting topic for me, because I see the potential this software can provide, but I don’t see how it benefits those of us who it has taken our work without permission... everyone that finds their work on this site, seems to agree… Here’s an example of part of what I found of my art…
I’m only thinking about keeping our website: cacklencomics.com
What do you feel about the issue of the data mining of millions of artists’ work?
It is true, that we artists would like to have as wide of an audience as possible, and this is why we share our work in the first place… but I’ve seen many artists leave and/or take out many of their images already… and I wonder if this should be the path I should take…
Do you think any of these sites can be trusted? Will my images be missed if erase them all? I guess I’ll decide in this next year… Happy New Year if we don’t talk again! - Ryan