Artificial Intelligence (AI) updates Free
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This resource is a space for updates around the Artificial Intelligence (AI) situation, including links to campaigns, opinion pieces and more, with the aim to share information.
Links
AOI submission to the Copyright and Artificial Intelligence consultation consultation February 2025
AOI: UK Illustrators Draw the Line: AOI Publishes AI Survey Results 2025
AOI Our response to Government white paper A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation June 2023. Go here for a summary of our response.
AOI AOI AI statement
LBB site: Association of Illustrators: Issues around AI Have Alarmed Creatives Everywhere Feb 2023
AOI: AI Survey Results
Campaigning
Write to your MP about the Consultation template This Creative Rights in AI Coalition template page finds your MP for you and allows you to send an email directly to them. You can add your own text as a creator or send the wording as it is. 2025
Objection to the Government’s Proposed Copyright Exemption for Generative AI Training – sign the letter to show your support. Feb 2025
Draft Template Copyright and AI Consultation Responses by Ed Newton Rex – useful wording for the consultation from a creator’s perspective (note this is external from AOI) 2025
Creative Rights in AI Coalition Multi member organisation calling on the Government and the tech sector to join CRAIC in building a future that values, protects, and promotes human creativity. Dec 2024
Statement on AI training – support for the statement: “The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.” Oct 2024
European Guild for Artificial Intelligence Regulation (EGAIR) EGAIR represents a group of professionals from the creative field, associations and companies pushing for a European regulation of AI companies:
EGAIR Manifesto – A proposal to regulate AI in EU. Sign the Manifesto ‘protect our art and data from AI companies’
EGAIR fundraiser for EU lobbying to reach the European Institutions and ask for an integration of the AI Act to regulate AI companies and the way they train their AI.
The Center for Artistic Inquiry: Restrict AI Illustration from Publishing: An Open Letter May 2023
Concept Art Association (CAA) are working to enforce AI companies regulations in the US:
CAA fundraiser
Reports and Articles
Culture, Media and Sport Committee and the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee – Letter to ministers calls on the government to introduce practical measures to improve transparency around the data used to train AI models and not to go with its preferred option. Feb 2025
The Observer: Don’t gift our work to AI billionaires Feb 2025
The Guardian: EU accused of leaving ‘devastating’ copyright loophole in AI Act Feb 2025
The Guardian: Labour’s AI plan could be good for British people – except the creatives it will throw under the bus. Jan 2025
Charting Gen AI: Baroness Kidron comment on the Consultation The award winning film director and producer. Jan 2025
Ed Newton Rex article The insurmountable problems with generative AI opt-outs in response to the Gov consultation proposing Opt outs for creatives. Dec 2024
Government Copyright and Artificial Intelligence consultation which proposes an exception to copyright for commercial scraping which creatives would be required to ‘opt out’ of. Dec 2024
News: AOI join Creative Rights In AI Coalition Dec 2024
TechTarget report on stock company, Getty Images, producing their own AI generator – Creating a clean generative AI data set with Getty Images Nov 2024
Diskurs: AI Training is Copyright Infringement A computer scientist and a legal scholar shed light on the black box of processing steps in AI training. September 2024
EGAIR: The EU AI Act has been approved Feb 2024
Dazed: The artists Midjourney allegedly uses to train its AI Jan 2024
The Midjourney List Jan 2024
MIT Technology Review: Nightshade This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI Oct 2023
Parliamentary Committee: Abandon artificial intelligence copyright exemption to protect UK creative industries, MPs say August 2023
Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA): Artificial Intelligence and Creative Work AOI is a member of CRA May 2023
Creative Boom: Should the world put a pause on AI? April 2023
Sky News: AI art generators face backlash from artists April 2023
The Guardian: Google calls for relaxing of Australia’s copyright laws so AI can mine websites for information April 2023
Grafill/Liz Ramsey: What is going on with AI March 2023
Art Itch: Weekly diaBlog by AOI Member Carcazan and LaSimo responding to AI and artists’ rights, launched in February 2023
The Guardian: AI art replicates inequity at scale. We need to learn about its biases – and outsmart the algorithm Feb 2023
New Yorker: Is A.I. Art Stealing from Artists? Feb 2023
Cornell University: GLAZE: Protecting Artists from Style Mimicry by Text-to-Image Models Feb 2023
European Writers Council: Joint statement from authors’ and performers’ organisations on Artificial Intelligence and the AI Act Feb 2023
PC Gamer: Put a name to the artwork behind AI art with this algorithmically smart tool
Westminster Hall debate: Potential impact of AI on intellectual property rights for creative workers AOI submitted illustrators concerns on AI to debater Sarah Olney MP. Feb 2023
The Guardian: ‘It’s the opposite of art’: why illustrators are furious about AI Jan 2023
My Modern Met Artist Recreates His Own Work With an AI Art Generator Jan 2023
Ars Technica: Paper: Stable Diffusion “memorizes” some images, sparking privacy concerns
Ars Technica: Stability AI plans to let artists opt out of Stable Diffusion 3 image training
Ars Technica: Artists stage mass protest against AI-generated artwork on ArtStation Dec 2022
British Copyright Council: Fair Remuneration in the Time of Text and Data Mining (TDM) Sept 2022
One Zero: Tom Chatfield: There’s no such thing as ‘ethical AI’ 2020
Legal Action
US Class action update Jan 2024
Reuters: AI companies ask U.S. court to dismiss artists’ copyright lawsuit April 2023
The Verge: Getty Images sues AI art generator Stable Diffusion in the US for copyright infringement Feb 2023
Getty: Getty Images taking legal action (in UK) against Stability AI (DreamStudio) Jan 2023
Ars Technica: Three illustrators in US class action against Stability AI, Midjourney och DeviantArt (DreamUp) for copyright infringement, violations of the right of publicity and unlawful competition This has been filed against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt by artists alleging these companies have infringed on their copyright due to the use of copyrighted images to train AI art generation tools without the artists’ agreement. Jan 2023
Datasets and tools
Glaze – Cloaking tool that disrupts AI models’ ability to interpret images effectively.
Nightshade – transforms images into “poison” samples, ‘so that models training on them without consent will see their models learn unpredictable behaviors that deviate from expected norms.’
Your website terms – we recommend this wording is included as part of your website terms and conditions: Other than strictly as permitted by law you must not carry out on this website or its content any automated data mining, web scraping or other processes for extracting data or images.
LAION-5B database – a dataset of 5,85 billion CLIP-filtered image-text pairs scraped from the internet. New versions released March 2023 and August 2024.
Have I Been Trained – Search 5.8 billion images in the LAION-5B dataset used to train popular AI art models. Drag your image in, or search by title text, to see if it is included in the dataset.
Events
AI and the Illustration Industry A collaborative event exploring the impact of generative AI on illustration as a career path and the wider creative community, organised by the European Illustrators Forum. Free – registration required. 14 September 2023
AOI Webinar: AI and Illustration. A presentation from lawyers Gabriella Playford and Amelia Maher from Sheridans exploring the use of AI in illustration and its impact on the industry. Free for AOI members (email for details) and £15 General Admission. 19 July 2023
Creators’ Rights Alliance: Artificial Intelligence and Creative Work event for creators to discuss their concerns, views, and experiences. AOI members Link to join. Free. 23 May 2023
Camberwell College of Arts remote__sensing “Illustration and AI” Free. 13 April 2023
AI/ML Media Advocacy Summit: US online event bringing together experts and creators to discuss the creative community’s response to AI/ML media generators (Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning). Free. 10th March 2023
Useful AOI Resources on Copyright and Contracts
For licensing commissions AOI publishes an Illustrator Commissioner Agreement form/Sample Contract with standard Terms and Conditions for members. You’ll find it here.
We aim to share different perspectives from within the illustration community. The linked content above represents the views and opinions of their authors, and does not necessarily represent the stance of the Association of Illustrators.
The AOI would like to make resources accessible to all members. If you would like an alternative format please ask.
