Feb 13
Is Creating AI Art Plagiarism?
Thu, February 13, 2025
• 12:00pm
- 1:00pm (1h) • Leighton 402
Camila Flowerman - Embedded Ethic, Harvard University
Recent innovations in machine learning and data processing have led to the creation of text-to-image models which can produce detailed artistic images in response to natural language text prompts. In addition to being widely discussed and circulated online, the images generated by these models have also been used to create magazine covers, to illustrate children’s books, and even to win art contests. Though the “AI art” produced by these text-to-image models is undeniably impressive from a technological standpoint, its creation and use has inspired a variety of criticisms online, especially on social media. In this talk I take up one particular objection to AI-generated art: that the use of text-to-image models to create artistic images constitutes plagiarism. I consider several initial formulations of this objection that have appeared either in online criticisms or in the philosophical literature, and argue that none are successful. Finally, I propose a different formulation of the objection in order to vindicate the view that there is something illicit about the way that text-to-image models themselves are created which can be considered a form of plagiarism.
Pizza provided!
from Philosophy
Event Contact: Daniel Groll