Recently, in the list of winners of the Sichuan Photographers Association's online quarterly competition "Looking for 'Green'", the third-prize winning work "Mountains and Mountains" is suspected to be AI synthesis, which has attracted social attention.
The controversial work "Mountains and Mountains", source: Internet
Many netizens bluntly said that "the pictures are fake at a glance" and "the traces of AI are very obvious", and some comments said that AI technology has developed to the point where "it is enough to confuse the real with the fake", and the "successful mixing" of the photography art industry competition has an adverse impact on the participants and the development of the art industry.
Source: Internet
Li Xuepu, a member of the Chinese Photographers Association and director of the online season competition department of the Sichuan Photographers Association, said that the rules of the competition clearly prohibit AI synthesis works from participating in the competition. When the organizer learned about it, they immediately contacted the author of the work. However, the author has been slow to provide relevant original material. After that, the official website of the Sichuan Photographers Association released the latest response, saying that after the results of this competition were released, there were many controversies on the Internet about the third-prize work "Layers of Mountains". The organizing committee attaches great importance to it, and after investigation and research, it is now decided to cancel its qualification for the award.
In this regard, Faye Wong, a member of the lawyer expert database of the "Rule of Law Daily" and a senior partner of Beijing Jingjing Law Firm, said that the use of AI-generated objects to participate in photography competitions without permission involves creative integrity issues, and if it cannot be detected and stopped in time, it will have an impact on the foundation of trust of the entire professional community.
The reporter learned that with the development of AI technology, there are indeed cases where AI works participate in photography competitions and win awards. Previously, at the Ballarat Photo Biennale, Sweden photographer Nordenskild's "Twin Sisters in Love" created with AI tools won the crown. But it has also sparked a debate about the role of AI in artistic creation. Where is the boundary of AI art creation? Do you need to be wary of the use of AI mapping? Numerous photographic artists are unhappy with this, arguing that it is a great disrespect to photography and photographers to link AI to photography, and that AI should not be included in photography awards or exhibitions.
Li Yue, a member of the lawyer expert database of the "Rule of Law Daily" and deputy director of the Digital Intelligence Construction Committee of Beijing Yingke (Shanghai) Law Firm, believes that the works of the contestants participating in the photography competition are original works formed by using judgment and personalized creation of light, composition and angle. The AI works are based on computer software, big data and artificial intelligence, and the competition between AI works and traditional photography works is unfair and undermines the enthusiasm of industry personnel, but AI painting competitions can be set up separately.
Li Yue also said that there are constant disputes over whether AI pictures enjoy copyright and copyright ownership, and there are no clear provisions on the copyright of AI works in mainland law. However, it can be seen from judicial precedents that the court recognizes that creators have intellectual property rights over AI works.
Previously, the Beijing Internet Court heard China's first AI-generated image copyright infringement case. In 2023, Li used the Stable Diffusion model to generate several portrait pictures by entering dozens of prompt words, setting the relevant iteration steps, picture height, prompt word guidance coefficient, and random number seeds, etc., and posted them on a social platform. The latter self-media account published the article "Love in March, in the Peach Blossoms", using the pictures it made.
Image generated with the Stable Diffusion model, source: Internet
Li believed that the other party had violated the right of authorship and the right of information network dissemination by publishing the pictures without his permission, and should bear legal responsibility, so he resorted to the court. The Beijing Internet Court held that Li directly set up the artificial intelligence model involved in the case as needed and finally selected the person involved in the picture, and that the picture involved in the case was directly generated based on the plaintiff's intellectual input, reflecting the plaintiff's personalized expression, so the plaintiff was the author of the picture in question and enjoyed the copyright of the picture in question, and finally ruled that the defendant was guilty of infringement. This is the first time that the court has recognized the creative rights and interests of users of AI painting models in the generated images. However, the judgment also emphasises that whether AI-generated content constitutes a work needs to be determined on a case-by-case basis and cannot be generalized.
"Therefore, it is necessary to clarify what level of creation will be recognized as originality for the copyright attribution of AI works, and the copyright protection legislation for AI works needs to be improved as soon as possible." Li Yue said.
Faye Wong said that the wide application of AI technology is the trend of the times, and how to standardize its use has become the key. "First of all, in accordance with the principle of good faith and the need to protect the public's right to know, AI-generated images should be prominently marked with the AI technology or model used; Second, the generation process should be clearly traceable and verifiable; Third, it is necessary to distinguish the scope of images that can be generated by AI, the types that can be restricted, and the types that are prohibited from being generated, so as to meet the needs of public order and good customs and the use of images in different cultural contexts. ”
(Source: WeChat public account of the rule of law network)