Greg Rutkowski, a digital artist known for his surreal style, opposes AI art but his name and style have been frequently used by AI art generators without his consent. In response, Stable Diffusion removed his work from their dataset in version 2.0. However, the community has now created a tool to emulate Rutkowski’s style against his wishes using a LoRA model. While some argue this is unethical, others justify it since Rutkowski’s art has already been widely used in Stable Diffusion 1.5. The debate highlights the blurry line between innovation and infringement in the emerging field of AI art.
They were not used for derivative works. The AI’s model produced by the training does not contain any copyrighted material.
If you click this link and view the images there then you are just as much a “pirate” as the AI trainers.
The models themselves are the derivative works. Those artists’ works were copied and processed to create that model. There is a difference between a person viewing a piece of work and putting that work to be processed through a system. The way copyright works as defined, being allowed to view a work is not the same as being allowed to use it in any way you see fit. It’s also innacurate to speak of AIs as if they have the same abilities and rights as people.