A list going viral reveals famous artists whose work was used to train AI generator

Thousands of artists have been named in a widely circulated list of people whose work was used to train a popular artificial intelligence art generator.

Thousands of artists — ranging from the late Norman Rockwell to the Oscar-nominated director Wes Anderson — have been named in a widely circulated list of people whose work was used to train a popular artificial intelligence art generator.

The 4,700-person list, which went viral on X after being shared by the artist Jon Lam last week, was used in a November court exhibit in a lawsuit against Midjourney, Stability AI, DeviantArt and Runway AI. The companies, which did not immediately respond to requests for comment, are accused of misusing copyrighted work from visual artists to train their generative AI systems. 

Many artists online have specifically called out Midjourney, one of the most popular of a new class of AI programs that can create images based on text prompts, alleging that the company stole their work without their permission.

In addition to the court exhibit, some social media users also shared a link to a spreadsheet listing almost 16,000 more artist names as “proposed additions” to a "Midjourney Style List." Midjourney’s founder, David Holz, had allegedly shared the list in the company’s public Discord server in early 2022. Holz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The list has underscored many artists’ frustrations with the lack of regulation around AI-generated art, which has exploded in popular use over the past year with apps such as Lensa and Epik allowing users to pay to generate profile pictures and yearbook-style photos based on their likenesses. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/famous-artists-trained-ai-generator-viral-list-rcna131995

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