‘Mass theft’: Thousands of artists call for AI art auction to be cancelled – The Guardian

A letter calling for the auction to be scrapped has received 3,000 signatures, including from Karla Ortiz and Kelly McKernan, who are suing AI companies over claims that the firms’ image generation tools have used their work without permission. The letter says: “Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a licence. These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them.” […]

A British artist whose work features in the auction, Mat Dryhurst, said he cared about the issue of art and AI “deeply” and rejected the criticisms in the letter. … Dryhurst told the Guardian that the piece of art being auctioned was part of an exploration of how the “concept” of his wife appeared in publicly available AI models. “This is of interest to us and we have made a lot of art exploring and attempting to intervene in this process as is well within our rights.” He added: “It is not illegal to use any model to create artwork. I resent that an important debate that should be focused on companies and state policy is being focused on artists grappling with the technology of our time.”