Artists are the latest creative industry to gripe about the exploitative nature of artificial intelligence. More than 3,000 have written to protest against plans by Christie’s to auction art created using AI.
That may sound a bit rich. Surely artworks command jaw-dropping prices and don’t even reward investors particularly well. Economist William Baumol once — perhaps pessimistically — estimated an annual return of 0.55 per cent, one-fifth that of financial assets over the same period.
But hang on. Below the auction house bonanzas — the Jean-Michel Basquiats and Leonardo Da Vincis — toil the rank and file. UK visual artists earn an average £12,500, almost half the minimum full-time wage, according to DACS, a non-profit that collects and distributes royalties to artists. Even in the US, median earnings of $51,800 are three-quarters those of a teacher. Such takings are quickly shredded, too. Paint may be cheap but galleries can take 30-50 per cent or more in commissions.
In this industry — similarly to journalism — copyright is the value node. Frida Kahlo’s likeness, emblazoned on tea towels, mugs and — briefly and contentiously — a Barbie doll, has generated vast multiples of what the Mexican artist achieved in her lifetime. Less storied artists license their work, albeit on a more modest scale.
Generative AI, the source of artists’ angst, muddies the picture. Large language models, fed on vast tracts of artwork, allow image generators to spit out any manner of pictures. There is scant transparency, and certainly no helpful bibliography enumerating sources, which makes it difficult to ascertain any copyright infringement.
That is particularly unhelpful given new requirements on copyright holders. The UK government, keen to burnish its tech credentials, wants to water down its world-topping copyright rules by allowing materials to be used to train AI models unless artists opt out.
Losing control over copyright, or having it taken away, hurts. Incomes dropped sharply once image generators entered the picture, according to Harvard Business Review. Kelly McKernan, a visual artist, alleges their income plunged overnight when an AI image generator began cranking out art in their style.
McKernan and several others have filed lawsuits, alleging these models have scraped millions of images, without the copyright owners’ consent. Cases are wending their way slowly through US and UK courts: they are complex and much of the ground is virgin terrain.
There will be more angst before any resolution on the legal or political fronts: in this art is no different from any other industry. But undermining copyright is a slippery slope. Tech companies, with plenty of their own intellectual property to protect, should be wary of taking liberties with others’.
louise.lucas@ft.com