Artwashing

Artists leak access to OpenAI's video model Sora.

Summary: A group of artist have leaked access to OpenAI video generation model Sora on Tuesday. They also published an open letter on HuggingFace in protest of ‘corporate artwashing’, saying the early access program appears to be less about creative expression, and more about PR and advertisement.

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Normally I don’t do breaking news, but…

On Tuesday, a group of artists seems to have temporarily leaked access to Sora, OpenAI’s long awaited video generator via Hugging Face, a popular development platform. They did this in protest of what they call ‘art washing’ and accuse OpenAI of exploiting them as PR puppets.

In an open letter, also published on HuggingFace, they write:

I recommend reading the full letter.

It’s important to note that not only are the artists asked to test and provide feedback, the model has likely also been trained on their creative works. We know this, because in March of this year, then-CTO Mira Murati sat down with WSJ for an interview that didn’t go as smoothly as she had hoped.

Remember this moment?

The truth is AI companies take whatever they can get their hands on, copyrighted or not. It’s widely known that this is how the industry operates, and they call it ‘fair use’. But if it so fair, why does nobody want to talk about it?

An act of rebellion

Like good art, the leak and open letter can be seen as an act of rebellion. One that has quickly garnered global attention, and hopefully, reignites the debate over ownership, attribution, and the value of human creativity.

Art washing is the practice of using real art, to train AI models that then are able to create AI-generated art that appears to be man-made. Does anyone fail to see the tragedy in that?

Alberto Romero

, one of Substack’s most eloquent writers, wrote the following about AI’s impact on the creative industry over the long-term:

The finest human artists and artisans will endure, shielded by their ability to transcend mediocrity through complexity. Most people will gravitate toward AI creations, favoring their familiarity over works that, in their pursuit of uniqueness, venture too far from the shore.

Only exceptional artists will survive, the rest is likely to be eaten and spat out by the shoggoth.

In response to Romero, I wrote:

McDonalds, IKEA, and Starbucks are wildly popular and their products are consumed by the many. AI will help create more products like that. And the businesses that sell them will be highly successful and surprisingly mediocre.

To which I added:

“I also believe there will always be a demand for authentic, human crafted produce; just like we watch chess played by humans, there will be a deep need for unfiltered, raw and human content — especially in the age of fake.”

That doesn’t mean you have to silently go along with what’s happening, of course.

The authors of the open letter stress that artists have no business to cooperate. It goes against your own best interests as an artist or creative. By helping to improve AI models or products, you’re basically contributing to your own demise.

AI that works for all of us

Let me be clear: I’m not against AI. I love some of the tools that are currently available on the market. But I also believe we are in the midst of larger spiral, an important timespan for humanity, in which we can set direction and demand a future that works for the many and not for the few.

This isn’t a big ask, especially for a company like OpenAI whose mission it is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.

It’s the same question that I quoted in my article from Sunday, Metaphors and Analogies: “What’s the chore we’re trying to solve for? Is communication the chore? Is reading comprehension and critical thinking the chore?”

Is art the chore?

Don’t let them off the hook,

— Jurgen

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Hungry for more?

Here are some of my recent articles that you may have missed:

Metaphors And Analogies

The AI Benchmark With A $1M Prize Pool

What AI Engineers Can Learn From Wittgenstein