Portugal: Works by Portuguese artists in US copyright lawsuit against AI firms

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Portugal: Works by Portuguese artists in US copyright lawsuit against AI firms

9:37 CAT | 05 Jan 2024

Image: Lusa

At least five artists from Portugal are among the more than 4,700 whose works are said to have been used without authorisation and have been included in a list presented as evidence in a copyright lawsuit against Artificial Intelligence (AI) services in the US.

Add Fuel (Diogo Machado), Jorge Jacinto, Nadir Afonso, Regina Pessoa and Vhils (Alexandre Farto) are the artists from Portugal whose names appear on the recently released list, which also includes Berriblue, a Polish-Irish artist based in Portugal since 2015, and André (Saraiva), a son of parents from Portugal, born in Sweden and raised in France.

In the case, which was initially brought by illustrators Sarah Anderson, Kelly McKernan and Karla Ortiz, the companies Midjourney, Stability AI and DeviantArt are accused of using works of art, available on the internet but protected by copyright, to train their tools that use Artificial Intelligence to produce images.

On 30 October, parts of the submission were rejected. However, the court allowed the illustrators to move forward with a new motion to continue the case, which was filed the following day.

At the time, the court gave them 30 days to submit new evidence.

This happened on 29 November, when 15 more pieces of evidence were accepted, including examples of images produced by the AI companies, original images and a list of the artists in question.

Following the presentation of this new evidence, the case now targets four companies (Midjourney, Stability AI, DeviantArt and Runway AI), with the number of plaintiffs rising to 10 artists: the three illustrators, plus Gregory Manchess, Adam Ellis, Gerald Brom, Grzegorz Rutkowski, Julia Kaye, H Southworth and Jingna Zhang.

The list of artists whose works were used without authorisation, included in the evidence, covers more than 4,700 names, including visual artists, filmmakers, illustrators, painters, sculptors, cartoonists, comic book authors, graffiti writers, and it includes, as well as Portuguese artists, others such as Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Quino, Peyo, Jonas Mekas, Wei Wei, Vincent van Gogh, The Twins, Miss Van, Mauricio de Sousa, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Joan Miró, David Lynch, Frida Kahlo, Emily Carr, Debbie Hughes and Bill Watterson.

Source: Lusa