A new precedent has been established in the field of images generated by artificial intelligence. Following the proliferation of tools that allow you to create images from commands thanks to artificial intelligence models, this week Kickstarter made an important decision on a project along those lines.
It turns out that days ago on the fundraising platform a campaign was started to finance a project entitled “Unconstrained Crowd-Driven AI Art” which basically intended to promote the training of artificial intelligence models to make it easier to make images using that system.
That project was created by a group called Unstable Diffusion who described his initiative thus: “Thisor is it to fund the development of open source, community first, AI models that will achieve the dream of a billion people who explore and create art with nothing but their imagination. This revolution in human expression will be equivalent to the invention of the printing press or the Internet. The artificial intelligence that allows anyone to make art.”
But while that might sound nice to some, there are several factors to consider. First of all, according to TechCrunchUnstable Diffusion is a group that emerged with a focus on the generation of pornographic images through artificial intelligence and therefore, although the Kickstarter did not explain it directly, this training project was basically to create better porn.
“We plan to create our own models and tweak and combine them for specialized use cases that we will turn into new brands and products”Chaudhry, the entity behind Unstable Diffusion, told TechCrunch in November of this year.
And in addition to the ethical considerations of this type of content, another controversial edge of this project is that in practice the training of these artificial intelligence models entails the use of images that already exist and belong to real artists so this campaign did not have a very good reception on social networks.
“Shame on Kickstarter for allowing Unstable Diffusion to crowdfund. You are enabling flagrant theft and funding a tool that can create abusive content, such as non-consensual pornography.”
“Absolutely f*ck this AI art Kickstarter project and everything it stands for. I am sure that the 20 million images mentioned below are also used with the consent of their creators. It actually sounds like a creepy AI hentai generator.”
Thus, in the face of the controversy, Kickstarter decided to take action in this regard and suspended the Unstable Diffusion project and, through a post on his blog, updated his position on projects that involve art generated by artificial intelligence.
“Kickstarter must, and will always be, on the side of creative work and the humans behind that work. We are here to help creative work thrive.” indicated Everette Taylor, the CEO of Kickstarter before adding that although this is a technology that is just being installed and therefore there are still several doubts regarding it, for now the platform’s position will focus on two areas: consider whether to use images of another in any part of the project (including AI training) and if the “project exploits a particular community or puts someone at risk of harm”.
As you can see, these considerations are quite broad and this probably will not be the end of the suspension or the controversies for art projects generated by artificial intelligence on Kickstarter.
Unstable Diffusion had already exceeded the goal of their project when Kickstarter canceled the campaign, so the $56,000 raised by the organization will be returned to the accounts of those who supported the initiative.
