Dalle E2 art, is fielding brickbats over its potential to ruin an artist's existence and the art

Dense illustrations flowing out of one's pure imagination are a work of art in the real sense. While it would be unimaginable what an artist like Kim Jung Gi, a prominent illustrator would have thought of his art, generated at the click of a button, Japanese people are up in arms against AI-generated art. Days after his death, a French game developer, 5you fed his work to Dalle E2 an AI model developed by OpenAI, and shared the output on Twitter. While some Twitter users are wondering whether it can count as a real homage to the artist, by cannibalizing his artwork with Dalle E2 art. The AI-generated art so offended art lovers so much that 5you received death threats for uploading Dalle E2 art, as reported by the Rest of World website.

This is not an isolated case of AI Vs anime art. Earlier, when AI-generated drawings of anime characters eating ramen went viral in Japan there was a huge uproar over how AI is getting details wrong though the art is impressive. An art piece depicting a Japanese girl eating noodles with her hands literally inspired human artists to make memes reminding artists how AI, even though used for good-natured humor, will be received with a pinch of salt.

The aesthetics part apart, the conversations around the ethics of claiming ownership have also come to the fore. Japanese art websites like FANZA, DLsite, Skeb, and Niconico have issued their respective policy statements regarding AI-generated art. In August RADIUS5, a Japanese AI SaaS-based image and video processing company released a new AI-powered image-generating service "mimic" which takes an artist's illustrations as input to generate similar images. Only a day after its release the website was temporarily suspended. Fielding the criticism from angry Twitter users, Radius5 CEO, Daisuke Urushihara released a statement saying, "Please refrain from criticizing or slandering creators". However, the illustrators were ruthless with their criticism and flooded Twitter with "No AI Learning" as they rightly predicted copyright violations. Japan is a country with harsh copyright laws and it still remains a question for artists themselves whether the AI art generator can be made responsible for copyright infringement, irrespective of its monetary value. But clearly, the Japanese consider it an existential threat to working artists.