- Getty Images will not allow content generated by online AI tools like DALL-E on its platforms.
- Its CEO has cited concerns over copyright as the reason.
- The current legal grey area regarding AI-generated images is casting serious doubt for many content platforms at the moment.
This year has seen a surge in online AI-generated art tools, with DALL-E being the most recognised. While the ability to take a series of unrelated words and feed it into a AI platform to generate artwork is indeed impressive, the technology does come with a few grey areas.
One of the most pressing at the moment is copyright, especially when it comes to AI tools utilising existing artwork or public figures to make creations.
It is for this reason that Getty Images has chosen to ban the sale and upload of AI-generated artwork to its platform.
Speaking to The Verge on the subject, Getty Images CEO Craig Peters noted that the legality of such systems and the technology in general pose more questions than answers at this stage. For that reason, the company is choosing to err on the side of caution given the current grey areas.
“There are real concerns with respect to the copyright of outputs from these models and unaddressed rights issues with respect to the imagery, the image metadata and those individuals contained within the imagery,” he told the publication.
“We are being proactive to the benefit of our customers,” added Peters.
Getty Images is now the latest user-generated content platforms to take this stance, with the likes of Newgrounds and PurplePort doing the same.
The decisions might have been made for good reason too, as a US federal judge recently ruled on the ability for people to patent or copyright the creations that result from using an AI tool like DALL-E. To that end, they are currently not able to patent, nor copyright, which further clouds the issue of ownership.
Much like NFTs and other more recent digital creations, the notion of who it belongs to remains unanswered. That said, we do not expect people to use these AI-generated platforms any less now that Getty Images and other have banned them.
[Image – Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash]
[Source – The Verge]
