Thoughts on Generative-AI Art
Lensa-AI, Stable Diffusion, privacy, consent and the future of art.
If you haven’t noticed the oddly futuristic, mythical and surreal looking depictions of your friends trending on social media, it’s only a matter of time before you do.
Lensa AI, a generative AI project which uses input images (usually your selfies) and some pointed referential words (“medieval,” “Star Wars” or “cyborg” for example) to generate a set of AI-generated (hence the name) avatars is all the rage at the time of this writing.
The resulting images look similar to the below set of avatars I generated using the program.
While generative AI is taking the internet by storm. Here are some thoughts before you upload your pictures onto Lensa AI.
Over 4 million people worldwide downloaded the app during the first five days of December and spent over $8mn in the app during the same period.
The privacy fine print published by Lensa states that once a user uploads their personal data, they are granting Prisma Labs a “perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable, sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, create derivative works of your User Content.”
If you’re worried about your privacy, you have the option to email privacy@lensa-ai.com and request for your data to be scrubbed.
Lensa AI uses an artificial intelligence model named “Stable Diffusion” which uses your selfies along with a few words of referential text to contextually generate new versions of your images based on millions of other images that are in its database.
The datasets that were used for training the “Stable Diffusion” model may have included work from artists who were neither compensated for nor consenting for their work to be used in this way.
Legally, it’s difficult to establish infringement considering a style of work cannot be trademarked. If an AI-generated work of art is not substantially similar to another work of art by a real artist, it may not infringe any intellectual property laws.
Generative AI tools are impacting artists and their long-term sustenance, especially in terms of commissioned work. However, Lensa AI disagrees and has stated the following in defense of its technology.
“As cinema didn’t kill theatre and accounting software hasn’t eradicated the profession, AI won’t replace artists but can become a great assisting tool”
A TechCrunch report and test of Lensa’s app found that when the service is fed selfies of celebrities, coupled with malicious and unauthorized Photoshop hack-jobs of celebrities combined on nude bodies, the AI generator creates authentic-looking nude images. This will pose a future risk in terms of the images users are able to generate of non-consenting parties.
These are a few quick, practical thoughts on the topic. I admit there are much more complex conversations to be had about the role of AI in the creative industry, where generative AI is looking poised to replace writers, designers, artists, musicians and any other creative professional without prejudice.
But first, maybe play around with Lensa AI and update your social media profile picture. These are crazy times.
