“Are you three ready to see my new painting?” said Verum. Orak, Felix and Scorch nodded. The painting was magnificent. But within a second of seeing it, Scorch ran to fetch her laptop and came rushing back, “Verum, take a look at this.” Verum stood frozen. It was identical to the one she had drawn.
“How in the MysticLand is this possible?” Verum was broken.
“Kelly McKernan, an acrylic illustrator from Tennessee, United States of America (USA), had the same reaction when she found that over 50 of her paintings were used to train Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI technology is a branch of computer science wherein humans feed data into machines and software to make them perform human tasks.
Like you, AI shocked Kelly, too. Along with two more illustrators, Kelly filed a complaint against Stability AI (which used Kelly’s work to train AI).
Kelly said the aim is to protect people who have copyrights from AI companies,” explained Scorch.
“What is copyright?” asked Felix.
“Copyright is the owner’s or creator’s right of their work. Once something is copyrighted, no one can duplicate or reproduce their work without their consent,” explained Orak.
Scorch nodded in agreement and continued, “The good news is a team led by a professor at the University of Chicago, Ben Zhao, created Glaze, a software tool. This tool can protect artists and their works from AI models duplicating them.
The tool can identify the minor changes made by AI on the paintings. Glaze works on cartoons, oil paintings, photography, and art. There are over 950,000 downloads worldwide already!”
Verum became slightly relieved, “I need to download Glaze right now. I am also going to obtain copyrights for my painting. Orak, please help me.” Orak opened his laptop and took over.