Artificial intelligence tools can generate artwork like images, text, and music based on a user's text prompts. While some see AI art as a creative tool, others argue it could replace human artists by commercializing works derived from pre-existing art without permission. There is ongoing debate around how to ensure AI and human artists can co-exist, including regulating commercial use of AI art and determining whether it constitutes copyright infringement by taking unidentifiable pieces from others' works. Lawmakers will need to address related issues as regulations are implemented.

1. ARTIFICIAL
INTELLIGENCE
AND ARTWORK
A PRESENTATION BY RYAN MUMFORD

2. PREDICTION
Artificial intelligence will inevitably lead to
a future in which being an artist is no
longer a viable career option.

3. WHAT IS AI ART?
Artificial intelligence tools such as Midjourney, NovelAI and MusicLM can take users’ inputs
and create artwork, written text or music depending on their specifications. The AI learns by
being fed information; taking in a vast array of preexisting artwork, writing and media, and
then repurposes aspects of the pieces it’s been fed to create something new.
Every image seen here was
created just by typing a few
simple key words into the
“terminal” of the Midjourney
AI program, such as “dog” or
“boy” or “floating”.

4. WHAT IS ITS IDEAL
PURPOSE?
Many have happily adopted artificial intelligence as a tool to aid in their creative process.
For example, artists having trouble designing a character can plug the different traits
they’ve already defined for a character into a generator and can observe what additional
traits the AI generates itself. This can then be used as a source of inspiration, rather than
the artists submitting the AI’s output as their own work.

5. CAN WE TELL THE
DIFFERENCE?
While the original sources are virtually impossible
to discern, there are often telltale signs that a
work has been AI-generated. AI artwork often has
trouble replicating human hands, and AI writing
can be prone to stilted sentence structure and
repeating itself.

6. WHAT’S THE CONCERN?
Many have argued this is a form of theft, as users of these generators
then can commercially benefit by using pieces of other people’s work
without permission. Others have argued that taking such a small piece
from several different works at once is creating something original.
The problem is that it is often impossible to tell where any specific aspect of
an AI-generated work is originally from.

7. WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
Being new technology,
official regulations for it have
yet to be implemented. The
way lawmakers handle such
regulations when the time
comes is important, as the
legal definition of what even
constitutes “art” will be
called into question. I believe
that AI-generated art and
human artists can co-exist,
but there will need to be
steps taken to prevent AI
from replacing human artists
altogether.
A commonly proposed
solution is that AI art should
be heavily regulated by law
and that using it for
commercial purposes
should be illegal. If it
repurposes other people’s
work without their
permission and it cannot be
reasonably determined
whose work was even used,
then it should be left as
solely a tool for personal
use.

8. The case will need to be
made that AI art does in
fact take away from the
profitability of the
original creator’s work,
which will not be easy to
prove – even if the AI-
generated work does
repurpose pieces of
existing work, is the
output similar enough to
any of the existing work
to be considered
copyright infringement?

9. Furthermore, it will need to be argued that AI art can serve as a functional replacement for
human artists in the first place. Are clients more likely to have their needs met by AI than actual
human artists? Will there be an observable impact on artists’ careers?
The public’s support will also be a factor, as politicians will naturally be interested in the whims of
their voters. The public will need to be convinced that the commercial use of AI art is either
ultimately harmful or simply unethical.

10. BROUGHT TO YOU BY
@MUMFORDILL
US
RYAN
MUMFORD

11. SOURCES
Main Research
• Dennis, Steve. “The AI Art Debate: Excitement, Fear and Ethics.” Medium, Towards
Data Science, 22 Dec. 2022, https://towardsdatascience.com/the-ai-art-debate-
excitement-fear-and-ethics-c04d30f338da.
• Piper, Daniel. “The Great AI Art Debate Just Got Even Messier.” Creative Bloq,
Creative Bloq, 2 Feb. 2023, https://www.creativebloq.com/news/ai-art-debate.
• Webadmin. “The Great AI Art Debate - Agi Fine Art - Advice Blog.” Advice for
Artists - AGI Fine Art - Advice Blog, 13 Feb. 2023,
https://agifineart.com/advice/the-great-ai-art-debate/.
Image Sources
• Varun. “From Pixels to Paintings: The Rise of Midjourney Ai Art.” LearnOpenCV, 6
Mar. 2023, https://learnopencv.com/rise-of-midjourney-ai-art/.
• Hachman, Mark, and Senior Editor. “Midjourney's Enthralling AI Art Generator Goes
Live For Everyone.” PCWorld, 26 July 2022,
https://www.pcworld.com/article/820518/midjourneys-ai-art-goes-live-for-
everyone.html.
• Muzli. “Midjourney Ai Inspiration #5.” Medium, Muzli - Design Inspiration, 7 Feb.
2023, https://medium.muz.li/midjourney-ai-inspiration-5-696122f43e06.
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https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/03/ai-generated-images-are-
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