My heart is torn to pieces.
In 2022, Jason M. Allen won the annual digital art competition at the Colorado State Fair (USA). He created his work «Théâtre d’Opéra Spatial» with the help of an AI tool Midjourney. At the time, Allen did not apologize for using AI and declared the victory of technology over people in art.
«Art is dead. It’s over. The AI has won. Humans lost», he said.
Since late 2022, Allen has been trying to register a copyright for his image. However, this proved to be a difficult task, as judges ruled that art created by generative AI cannot be copyrighted due to the lack of human authorship.
Last week, Allen filed an appeal to the Colorado federal court. He argues that he does not receive sufficient profit from his work due to the decline in its value in the market. Allen also claims numerous cases of theft of his work without compensation or attribution.
Allen claims that his creative contribution was to introduce a series of requests (prompts) to create the image, adjust the scene, and determine the tone of the painting. In his opinion, these actions are comparable to the creative efforts of other artists and deserve copyright protection.
Allen’s case has drawn attention to copyright issues in the AI era, with many artists criticizing the use of their works to train AI models without consent. In 2023, a group of artists filed a class action lawsuit against companies that develop AI for image generation.
Allen’s lawyers emphasize the need to adapt legislation to protect the rights of those who use AI for creative expression. At the same time, the issue of protecting the rights of artists whose works are used to train AI models arises.
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