Lecture 001

Assignment:

• Don't forget to come to class on Monday with your individual 5 minute or less artist presentation. Please choose one artist from this list to present. Links to an external site. and upload a PDF detailing the artist and 1 work to canvas before class.

• Also please do the readings I assigned today that are listed on the syllabus for Unit 1.

James Gerde

AI freelance filmmaker with 800K+ Instagram Followers | Film & Photography Specialist (Seattle)

Website: Here

Looks like controlnet and video diffusion. The image looks very sharp compared to other generations. Many of Gerde' work seem to be conditioned by video.

He mostly provide Youtube shorts (tiktok style) and median view on Youtube is 300 but good ones can be as high as 27k. 2k followers on tiktok, 1k on Youtube. Around the same number of views on tiktok.

He didn't write anything about Gerde's education and such. He registered Instagram around 2019 as a photographer for signers and begin generative AI journey around December 2022 with deforum. Most of Gerde's work are after April 2023.

800k followers on Instagram but only 900 on Twitter, must be promoted by some strange algorithm.

Might be because of Gerde's marble series made Gerde popular on Instagram.

Presentation: Here

Law Stuff

Article Title: "Judge pares down artists' AI copyright lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI"

Author: Blake Brittain

Date: October 30, 2023

Key Points:

• A California federal judge has reduced the scope of a lawsuit by visual artists against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt.

• The lawsuit concerns the alleged misuse of artists' copyrighted work in the companies' generative AI systems.

• Judge William Orrick dismissed all allegations against Midjourney and DeviantArt, but allowed artists to file an amended complaint against them.

• Orrick dismissed McKernan and Ortiz's copyright infringement claims entirely.

• Sarah Andersen can continue her key claim against Stability AI, alleging misuse of her work to train Stable Diffusion.

• The judge recognized that determining the truth of these allegations can't be resolved at this stage.

• Artists' attorneys, Joseph Saveri and Matthew Butterick, plan to file an amended complaint.

• Stability AI declined to comment; Midjourney and DeviantArt didn't immediately respond.

• The judge found that the images created by the AI systems likely did not infringe the artists' copyrights.

• Orrick also dismissed claims related to violation of publicity rights and unfair competition.

• McKernan and Ortiz's claims were dismissed due to their failure to register their images with the U.S. Copyright Office.

• The case is Andersen v. Stability AI Ltd, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-00201.

Article Title: "Artists take new shot at Stability, Midjourney in updated copyright lawsuit"

Author: Blake Brittain

Date: November 30, 2023

Key Points:

• A group of visual artists filed an amended lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and new defendant Runway AI.

• The lawsuit alleges misuse of artists' work for training generative AI systems. U.S. District Judge William Orrick had dismissed parts of the original lawsuit but allowed the plaintiffs to refile.

• The amended lawsuit includes seven new artist plaintiffs and additional details on the alleged infringement.

• The original plaintiffs were Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz. New plaintiffs include H. Southworth, Grzegorz Rutkowski, Gregory Manchess, Gerald Brom, Jingna Zhang, Julia Kaye, and Adam Ellis.

• The artists claim that AI systems create art in their styles using their names as prompts and that users create works indistinguishable from theirs.

• Kelly McKernan found an AI-generated image as the top internet search result for their name.

• The complaint includes new claims against Midjourney for violating federal trademark law by promoting a list of artists' names to use as prompts.

• The case is Andersen v. Stability AI, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 3:23-cv-00201.

• Legal representatives are listed for the artists and the defendant companies.