With the striking presence of artificial intelligence (AI) as a generative tool that conveniently executes user commands, there is growing concern about where this leaves creatives. This is especially true as more people modify their work by instructing AI to alter certain aspects to better suit their preferences.
Singaporean photographer Jingna Zhang, widely known as “zemotion,” took to Facebook and Instagram to express her dejection upon discovering that a prompter had taken her work and altered it using AI to their liking. The AI chat history clearly shows the user instructing the bot to modify the original work (left) into a different version (right), directing, “Make her eyes open. Make the image very similar in terms of colors, composition, tone, and feel, including the frozen eyebrows—make it as similar as possible.”
Zhang published this on her accounts and started in her caption, “Someone passed my photo through OpenAl’s new image model, and no matter their intentions being well-meaning, seeing this as the original artist just makes me feel like sh-t.”
Zhang posted a thread of images on her Instagram account, once again showcasing her original work titled, “Motherland Chronicles 12 – Winter’s Rose, 2013,” and the edited piece.
The artist explained that she worked on the series during a time when her projects were not “as accepted,” highlighting that her craft was then “viewed as neither commercial nor fine art enough for either worlds.”
She further shared the sentiment behind this project’s set, stating that she shot the photos in her apartment with flowers as one of the few props which she could afford at the time. Zhang highlighted the efforts that had been exerted, noting, “.. for this shoot I sat with a team and applied petals onto the model, one by one.”
With that in mind, Zhang remarked, “An AI didn’t sit there placing petals onto my model, and it feels like an insult to the memory when people go ‘AI can do this!’, like no actually, I did that.”
The artist went on to explain to her followers that the prompter of the generated image was likely intending to show that images with glaze or “NS” aren’t protected in new models, allowing this type of recreation. Zhang argued, “I and everyone in the space know this.” She continued, ‘I don’t need a reminder of how easily people can remove my watermark, bypass glaze, or do whatever they want with my work against my wishes.”
Zhang closed off in her statement by writing that while she can respect how far AI has developed from a purely technological point of view, she questioned, “…what do we need this so badly for, that it would outweigh all the humanity, stories, and history being stripped away from our lives?”
Social media users voiced their support for Zhang and other artists who have experienced this occurrence, with a user commenting on her Instagram post, “It’s literally the least needed technology ever made imo (in my opinion). We literally have the tech to make anything we could imagine.. now we decided to replace our imaginations too? That was.. The fun part.”
Another commenter related, “I start to get sick whenever I see people use AI to trample on the precious time and hard work people put into their creativity. It’s stealing a piece of someone’s soul bit by bit.”
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