Algorithms Can Now Mimic Any Artist. Some Artists Hate It

Swedish artist Simon Stlenhag is known for haunting paintings that blend natural landscapes with the eerie futurism of giantrobots, mysterious industrial machines, and alien creatures. When Stlenhag discovered that artificial intelligence had been used to mimic his style, he felt a sense of dread.

The act of imitating an artificial intelligence was performed by a reader in intellectual property law at the University of Sussex. He used a service called Midjourney to create images that looked like Stlenhag.

The images were created to highlight legal and ethical questions generated by art. Many artificial intelligence programs are capable of making art on demand in response to a text prompt, using machine learning to digest millions of labeled images from the internet. They can conjure up almost any combination of objects and scenes after that training.

Stlenhag was chosen for the experiment because he has criticized artificial intelligence in the past. While a piece of art may be protected by copyright, an artistic style can't, according to a post by Guadamuz.

Stlenhag didn't like the stunt. While borrowing from other artists is a cornerstone of a living, artistic culture, he dislikes artificial intelligence because it reveals that that kind of derivative, generated goo is what our new tech lords are hoping to feed us.

Stlenhag didn't reply to questions. Guadamuz apologized to Stlenhag and deleted the images from his account. Guadamuz received death threats and angry messages from people who didn't like his stunt. The experiment was seen as an attack. Guadamuz jokes that by night he becomes a supervillain and destroys artists' livelihoods.

DALL-E, a program that uses machine learning to generate images from a string of text, was announced by Openai in January of 2021. DALL-E 2 can generate photos, illustrations, and paintings that look like they were created by humans. It was announced in July that images could be used for commercial purposes.

Openai restricts what users can do with the service, using tools that can detect offensive images. Similar tools, such as Midjourney, used by Guadamuz to mimic Stlenhag, can be different in their rules.