AI generated images

From Cartoonists Rights Network International Executive Director Terry Anderson.

Cartoon by Keyvan Varesi

Cartoonists are pushing back against so-called "a.i." with the class action lawsuit against DeviantArt, Midjourney and Stability AI now underway in the USA and a similar effort still being crowdfunded in Italy.

As a matter of ethics and in solidarity with the countless artists, living and dead, who have been robbed in order to facilitate machine-learning via massive data-mining, we believe "a.i." as it is currently presented is to to repudiated in the harshest terms, and where laws have been broken those in charge at the corporations responsible should be prosecuted. 

Many cartoonists and illustrators agree, though not all.

Ii is not Luddite thinking to oppose theft. 

And defense of art-making as a valuable process speaks to fundamentally human impulses. 

Tools should unlock creativity. These seek to bypass it in favour of product aggregated from extant work. 

Commercial visual artists happen to be among the first affected by this, but left unchecked and unregulated all creative industries will be decimated and thereafter culture impoverished.