Donald Trump being arrested or the Pope dressed in the latest fashion. These are two examples of images created by artificial intelligence that have gone viral in recent months. There are those who took them as real, but in addition to the indignation or disbelief for being false images, they illustrate the copyright debate. Although it seems that they are images that have come out of nowhere, artificial intelligence feeds on already existing photographs that have copyright.
It is so evident that there have been images created by AI that some of them showed the watermark of the source they used. Since the advent of the Internet, the fight to protect the copyright of images has been titanic and when the matter began to be somewhat regulated, the arrival of AI represents a setback that photography professionals will have to adapt to.
Between the skills it is acquiring and the unauthorized use of people’s creations, artificial intelligence has put a sector that has already lost many jobs in recent decades in check. Eva Casado, president of the Association of Professional Photographers of Spain (AFPE), has spent two years observing the capabilities of AI in photography and explains, for example, that with only the image of a mannequin with clothes an image can be created on fashion and that even some advertising agencies use AI exclusively to carry out campaigns.
Image rights have also been affected. On average, the contracts usually establish five years of right to use the contracted image and then it is renewed if interested. This debate arose as a result of the boy who appears in Kinder chocolates, since decades later his image was still used. Therefore, this area is regulated and models must be paid periodically if a company continues to use their face. Now, the AI ??can create models that do not have to be paid. Of course, it will feed on already existing faces.
To curb the use of images without permission, Casado believes that it is essential that this new situation be regulated as soon as possible. The closest thing there is to what is happening in the law is the mention of collage, but if this new use of photographs is not clearly clarified, the sector is defenseless before the huge and distant artificial intelligence companies. For people who simply upload snapshots to their networks, he recommends setting them to private if they want to protect them.
At the moment, very few governments have regulated the relationship between copyright and artificial intelligence. One of those that has done so, Japan, surprised by offering an open bar of photographs to the AI, arguing that it should not stop learning from it. The decision taken by the Japanese country could set precedents in other countries. For example, the US has not made a move yet and the European Union is in the phase of preparing a draft.
Illustrators in Japan, the birthplace of manga and anime, insist that intellectual property be protected. And it is that it is not only that the AI ??takes images that are on the network, but it can also imitate the style of a specific creator (artist, cartoonist, etc.). This is the case of Cyberpunk: Peach John, the first manga created by IA and accused of copying Sui Ishida’s style. Some have already taken action, such as Getty Images, which in January sued Stable Diffusion (AI image generator) for the use of its bank of photographs, all of which are protected by copyright.
While the congresses and parliaments of the nations decide what to do, Casado says that many photographers are being trained in AI and thus have it as a tool for their work. He explains that years ago, when talking about robots and artificial intelligence, it was thought that it would affect mechanized sectors more and that creativity would remain something exclusive to human beings, but this has not been the case. “We believed that machines were only going to do things that did not require imagination and creativity. The problem facing us now is that what we thought was ours is also held by machines despite the fact that artificial intelligence has to feed on us”, he explains.
As has happened with each new technological arrival, the photography sector has to reinvent itself once again. There are still aspects that AI cannot cover, such as immortalizing memories such as weddings or vacations (although they can invent them). Also, reel and slides are all the rage, they are fully manual snapshots. Author photography has also joined the fashion for film, slides or plates, as it is the best way to mark your own style. “What we photographers are going to need is to reconvert ourselves and study how to differentiate ourselves from the machines,” says Casado.
