ONE LONE ARTIST Karla Ortiz, bore the weight of every single visual artist yesterday. (WATCH)

Karla Ortiz, the FIRST AND ONLY VISUAL ARTIST who has been invited to join the national conversation on generative artificial intelligence (AI), spoke as a witness in yesterday’s Senate Judicial hearing on AI & IP. (Link to hearing and testimony below).

The hearing on AI & IP included panelists: Jeffrey Harleston, Universal Music Group; Karla Ortiz, Artist/Illustrator; Matthew Sag, Emory University School of Law; Dara Rao, Adobe; Ben Brooks, Stability AI.

Ortiz had the awesome responsibility of having to bear the weight for every artist on the planet yesterday, because no other visual artists have been included in these conversations so far.  She spoke about the predatory and exploitative data practices which have led to “almost the entirety of [her] work both personal and commercial” having been stolen by AI companies for their profit.  She went on to say, “I have never been asked. I have never been credited.  I have never been compensated one penny.”  

When the hearing turned to the subject of works being “Opted-In to” vs “Opted-Out of” datasets, Ortiz stressed she would never consent for her work to be used to train an AI.  Additionally, she pointed out that because companies like Stability AI have never given artists like her any notification whatsoever that their work had been taken in the first place; it would be very difficult, if not impossible for an artist to know that they needed to Opt-Out from training a dataset.  This is also the case, for hundreds of thousands of other artists, photographers, musicians, writers and creators whose work has also been stolen to build the datasets for these generative AI models.

Jeffrey Harleston, Executive VP of Business and Legal Affairs from Universal Music Group, was also very supportive of the artists and creators who have been harmed.  He additionally talked about a “federal right of publicity,” as well as “visibility into AI training data.”

People seem to understand when a person’s identity or likeness is compromised, but theft of art still seems to be a somewhat elusive concept for the general public to personally relate to.  Art affecting everything, isn’t just some poetic or esoteric notion; its actually more practical and relevant in every person’s lives than they may even realize.  Quite literally, the chair you are sitting in as you read this, the room you are sitting in while you read this, and the device you are using to read this - all of these things, would not exist if a person didn’t decide what it would look like so that they could be made.

Additionally, this is how the person who designed the chair you're sitting in, is able to make a living and feed their family.  People deserve to be paid for their time and their work.  In fact, stolen works for datasets harm artists & creators in many ways.  Not only does art being scraped and stolen from the internet directly harm an artist’s business; it takes away an artist’s ability to choose when, where and how their works are sold.  Further, stolen data that is used to generate images which they are not compensated for or have control over, may even force a creator to have to compete against themselves.

Including Karla Ortiz in yesterday’s hearing was a first step in the right direction, but there should be several more hearings and panels on the subject.  This is because the work products of hundreds of thousands of artists & creators is regularly served up as “data fuel” for AI image generators, and daily exploitation by these AI companies is harming them.  There is a much bigger conversation to be had.

If the government wants to get it right, they need to be looking at the entire picture, not just the very narrow perspective of a few select CEOs and fiscally vested computer experts.  Regulating generative AI MUST include many conversations with a variety of HUMAN artists and creators - of all kinds.

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Full Senate Judiciary Hearing can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoCJun7gkbA
-Karla Ortiz: starts at 31:20
-UMG Legal Counsel: starts at 36:20

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We MUST continue pushing for those in the White House and DC to speak to the HUMAN artists and creators whose intellectual property (IP) is propping up this entire new industry!  We need to continue to making our voices louder and louder on this!  

Please, share the link to the hearing above as far and wide as you can, and please help us circulate the link to this petition as well, so we can continue to get the word out!

Lastly, can each of you who signed, get just 10 of your friends to sign it too?

PLEASE, if you’ve already shared our petition, SHARE OUR UPDATES and encourage people to sign.  As of this e-mail, we now have 12,116 signatures.

As we have mentioned in previous updates, receiving notifications and alerts on the subject is also a good reason for people to sign our petition - so that they can be connected with us to receive updates on what’s happening around this issue in Washington, DC - as it happens.

We want to be able to quickly send out updates to everyone who has signed, so we can let those who care about artists and creators know additional steps they can take and when and where to weigh in, when the moment needs us.

By now you know we don’t spam you, our plan is only to send out relevant updates on advancements of the issue - not endless fundraising garbage.

Thank you again for your support!

 #ConceptArtAssociation #SupportHumanArtists #CreateDontScrape #Solidarity