Some individuals set resolutions to improve and cultivate better habits each new year. Midjourney encountered a circulating roster of artists whose creations were utilized by the company to educate its conceptual artificial intelligence program at the onset of 2024.
To educate its AI text-to-image system, artists associated with a Google Sheet on the social media platforms X (formerly known as Twitter) and Bluesky during the New Year’s period, asserting that it showcased how Midjourney curated its array of time periods, styles, genres, movements, techniques, and methodologies, along with numerous musicians. Notably, senior illustrator Jon Lam from Riot Games shared several visuals of Midjourney’s application developers deliberating on constructing an artist database to instruct its AI image synthesizer.
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https://x.com/JonLamArt/status/1741545927435784424?s=20
The 24-page compilation of artists’ names utilized by Midjourney as a training dataset for its AI image generator (Exhibit J) includes modern and contemporary blue-chip figures, as well as artists with successful tenures at companies like Hasbro and Nintendo. Among the esteemed artists featured are Vincent van Gogh, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Gerhard Richter, Frida Kahlo, Damien Hirst, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Paul Signac, Norman Rockwell, Banksy, and Walt Disney.
Hyan Tran, a six-year-old prodigy and former art contributor who participated in an event for the Seattle Children’s Hospital in 2021, is one of the contributors who lent their talent to the renowned trading card game Magic: The Gathering.
Phil Foglio advised other artists to review the list to ensure their inclusion and suggested seeking legal counsel for those not already represented.
A version of the Google document was archived on the Internet, though access was promptly restricted.
The roster of 16,000 designers was referenced in a legal document filed on November 29 of the previous year, alongside the submission of 455 pages of supplementary materials in response to the class-action lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt.
A federal court prosecutor in California dismissed multiple claims brought by artists against Midjourney and DeviantArt on October 30, prompting the aforementioned legal filing.
The class-action lawsuit against Midjourney and DeviantArt was first received by the United States District Court of the Northern District of California approximately a year ago.
In September, the US Copyright Review Board determined that images generated using Midjourney’s technology were ineligible for copyright protection due to their creation process. At the 2022 Colorado State Fair, Jason M. Allen’s photograph secured the $750 top prize in the modern art category. Despite the online popularity of the win, artists expressed significant concerns about the future of their careers.
Researchers from the University of Chicago developed a contemporary tool for artists to safeguard large graphic datasets from potential misuse and prevent unauthorized utilization of artworks to train AI image synthesizers, a process they referred to as “poisoning” the data.
