In the latest installment of our Let’s Talk podcast series, AMT lab staff members Maraika Lumholdt and Natalie Larsen discuss recent news in NFTs and policies, and their implications for the future. They also discuss AI as artistic collaborator and the ethical, moral, and legal issues that go along with it.
Listed in order of discussion are the articles referenced:
Pennsylvania and Washington Become the First US States to Tax NFTs
An A.I.-Generated Picture Won an Art Prize. Artists Aren’t Happy.
Artist receives first known US copyright registration for latent diffusion AI art
Maraika Lumholdt: The US Copyright Office has ruled out copyright registered to AI as the author as that is not a human. Humans are the only ones that can have a copyright registration, but it hasn't specifically ruled against copyright on AI-assisted pieces. So when it's not, the AI is the sole author, but a contributor.
Maraika Lumholdt: Welcome to another Let's Talk episode of Tech in the Arts, the podcast series on the Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. The goal for our Let's Talk series is to exchange ideas, bring awareness, and stay on top of the trends. My name is Maraika Lumholdt I work on the podcast here at AMTLab. And today I am joined by our staff writer and lead researcher, Natalie Larsen, to talk about current news that has been happening in the month of September, 2022. The topics we will cover today are about the laws catching up to NFTs and how AI continues to disrupt the world of the arts.
So the first story that I brought here today is all about the wild, wild world of NFTs. Have you ever bought an NFT?
Natalie Larsen: I have not.
Maraika Lumholdt: Hey, I would buy that. I would say big, big crypto bucks for that. So NFT is notoriously a disruptive technology and something that's still relatively new in the world. So laws, you know, haven't necessarily kept up with regulating NFTs. They're pretty new type of asset people can buy and trade. But over the summer, both Pennsylvania and Washington became the first US states to tax NFTs. So similar to how sales tax might be applied to a physical, you know, non-digital, tangible good. Now, NFTs in these states have taken steps towards taxing NFTs. So explicitly they're both listing them as digital assets subject to sales and use taxes that's the specific legal jargon around it. And I think an important note too is that this is new legislation, but it's kind of making current laws been to now encompass NFTs.
Natalie Larsen Right.
Maraika Lumholdt: And then how they're forming these new guidelines. So there's also a teeny bit of difference between the two. Pennsylvania is adding NFTs to their Department of Revenues, taxability Matrix, but that's about all they're doing at this point. Whereas Washington has proposed a lot of specific guidelines. So now when buying an NFT you have to document the time and place of each transaction, which includes the addresses of the buyers, which helps them then tabulate the vendor's tax obligation. As well as make concrete the source of the transactions. So if you know anything about NFTs, this seems like very contrary to what NFTs are all about, I think cryptocurrency and which is used to purchase NFTs values privacy, and an anonymity as, what's the word? Anonymity. Anonymity, as one of the biggest, unique points about cryptocurrency and NFTs. Right? So, really interesting that this kind of regulation is eliminating that by, you know, theoretically if this law in Washington is successful, the anonymity might go away if specific addresses and identities have to be identified when NFTs are being purchased.
Natalie Larsen Right. Some other states that are kind of going this direction are in New York, New Jersey, and Illinois, um, that have issued guidance previously on digital transactions involving cryptocurrency, but not necessarily anything related to NFTs. Also, Puerto Rico in the past has, at least stated their intent to issue guidance on taxing NFTs. So, it really begs the question how all of these new laws and regulations will kind of change that ecosystem. Like you said, Maraika, based on anonymity.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah. Very interesting. I know there's a lot of discussion about NFTs and crypto and the goods and the bads. So, I wonder if there will be any backlash as more and more states potentially adopt this kind of regulation through taxation or other means of regulating. It feels like a big enough industry and enough people participating that there might be some backlash on a wide scale, but I guess that's yet to come. We'll keep watching.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah, definitely, definitely an interesting story. Our second story here, which has been a pretty, well circulated story on several news outlets, and it's launched kind of a huge conversation of the use of artificial intelligence in visual art. This digital artist from Colorado, Jason Allen, entered a state fair art competition with an AI generated work and ended up winning in the category of emerging digital artists. He was awarded a blue ribbon and $300. A lot of artists who don't use AI in their art became really angry over this. People took to Twitter talking about how this is the death of artistry and kind of talking about their fears of, you know, robots taking over and displacing human artists. There was a digital artist, RJ Palmer, who even tweeted what makes this AI different is that it's explicitly trained on current working artists. This thing wants our jobs, it's actively anti-artists as a pretty heavy statement there.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah. That is a bold claim.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah.
Maraika Lumholdt: But I think that's seems to be a lot of the backlash we hear around AI right? It's like, what is art?
If they're less, less humans involved, or no humans involved.
Natalie Larsen: Right. It's like, is it a collaborator? Is it just taking our job entirely? Like what is its role? So, Jason Allen has consistently fought back against these criticisms. People have accused him of cheating as well. He says he did not cheat; he didn't break any rules. He was using AI as a creative collaborator. And he just thinks it's a wonderful thing and is inspired to see what kind of artwork comes out of it. He also emphasized that working artists who are worried about being put out of work by AI or some other technology. Their anger should be directed towards the companies that are choosing to replace human artists with technology and not necessarily the technology itself. He was quoted by saying the ethics isn't in the technology, it's in the people. So it's really up to, up to the people to decide what's ethical and how to use this technology ethically.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah, I see his point. And I guess AI are still trained by humans. Like I know that brings a whole another conversation about bias and everything that.
Natalie Larsen: Oh yeah.
Maraika Lumholdt: Exists in humans that then can be replicated within AI. But yeah, I do think it brings of different use cases. Like I remember seeing how Heinz the condiment company used AI generated art in its advertising. So that, you know, is replacing a human function that human designers would do otherwise. I understand how that could be ethically bad, whereas if an artist is choosing to use an AI to system seems like a different consideration.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah. Yeah. And I completely empathize with these artists who are angry. You know, that this happened. I mean, it's already not really easy to make a living doing art, and now you have this disruptive technology coming in making it even harder to be honest. So, what other kinds of thoughts or emotions does this kind of conjure up in you Maraika?
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes back to that question of what [00:07:00] is art and how do we regard. Or what art, what's its status in our minds, which is a huge kind of almost existential question, and I think it's a reality that I personally have not wanted to face the AI and machines can do something that feels so inherently human creation. Right? Being creative. Mm-hmm. I don't know. I'm starting to see the side of, if you're choosing to use it in a way, that is assisting you and perhaps even enhancing your creative process. I can see the benefits, but it is hard for me to accept a world where art is, does not have any human touch.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah, I would agree with you there, I think. To an extent, if it's completely AI generated there, it's missing that like human element. That's just something that comes up for me is. I mean I don't know.
Maraika Lumholdt: Can we relate or like get the emotional takeaways from art that an AI generated versus a human? I don't know. I don't think I've really looked at enough AI art to say, oh, yeah, this is giving me the same, Yeah, yeah, impact.
Natalie Larsen: Because like you said, AI only works with what we input into it. Based on the kind of experiences and types of art that we input, that's what's going to get generated.
Maraika Lumholdt: Super interesting.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah.
Maraika Lumholdt: All these conversations just make me feel like we're living in Wally or some like dystopian tech world.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah, for sure. It's a little scary. But that's just another thing to look out for. There are a lot of conversations happening about this kind of all over Twitter. And all over the internet. Yeah, I guess we'll really see where that goes.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah. I'm sure we'll have this conversation in 10 years and it'll be a completely different one.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah. Yeah. Who knows.
Maraika Lumholdt: Who knows. Always fun to ponder a digital future.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah.
Maraika Lumholdt: That is a good segue into my next article, which is talking about copyright for AI art. So similar to some of the points you just raised about. How an AI can be treated as an artist in terms of like artistic value and merit. I think copyright is a big legal application.
Natalie Larsen: Mm-hmm.
Maraika Lumholdt: Around art and, and how AI is changing what copyright could mean. Just another example of laws that are trying to catch up with. Digital change, right? So in this case, a New York based artist just received a copyright protection for graphic novel that they illustrated featuring AI generated art. So the illustrations were done with the assistance of AI. So the artist is named Chris Cashin Nova, and their comic is called Zaria of the Dawn. And specifically this artist used Mid Journey, that's the, the AI they chose to use. The US Copyright Office has ruled out copyright registered to AI as the author as that is not a human. Humans are the only ones that can have a copyright registration, but it hasn't specifically ruled against copyright on AI-assisted pieces. So when it's not, the AI is the sole author, but contributor. So this definitely is still very alien to the world of copyright and just the general public in terms of how we're thinking about it, but it is gaining traction and becoming more of a conversation. Like last week, Getty Images announced that it's banning the sale of AI generated artwork because of the potential unaddressed rights issues that come to bear with that. And they've expressed concerns over the ethical issues as well of using artists' work without consent to train AI software. Mm-hmm. So we were just saying how humans are the ones that are choosing the inputs to train an AI. So in the case of art, you know, we're feeding art that is done by a human and is the intellectual property of a human into the AI to create something new. But how do those people that help train the AI get credit when I think most of the time they're not even privy to the fact that their art is being used.
Natalie Larsen: Right. Exactly. It kind of reminds me of like a music artist not being aware that their song is being sampled for something.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah. Yeah. That's a comparison. This is like the next generation of that kind of concern.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah, definitely a lot of interesting, like not only legal issues, but ethical ones too. Like you said, with arts, just not, You can't consent to something if you don't even know what's happening.
Maraika Lumholdt: I mean, I think in the rise of digital, we think about consent in terms of data a lot like the data that we're sharing on social media and how that's used by social media companies or websites that are collecting any other kind of data. But I feel like we need to broaden our everyday definition of what is our personal property and could be used. Anything that we think we might have rights over, scarily, could be used against stairwell.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah. Revisions to the US copyright office or to the US copyright code need to be made, I think, to, to protect these artists. At least make them aware when their images are being used to train an AI.
Maraika Lumholdt: Similar to how we were saying how NFTs are starting, [00:12:00] you'd get taxed and showing up in tax law. I do think copyright is probably the next big push.
Natalie Larsen: So it's interesting with this story in particular, just to see what kind of legal precedent that sets for for future issues, really.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah. I wonder if this will be a push for artists that are using AI to seek copyright now that they can potentially get something if AI is just a collaborator or vice versa artist to take a stronger stance in protecting what they own legally. From being used in AI. Yeah, we'll see.
Natalie Larsen: Definitely. So kind of going off of that same topic, is the last story that we're going to be talking about. And it also features AI. Being used in the art world as a collaborator, but this time to solve a problem really. So two PhD students at the University College London, along with a, an artist named Jesper Eriksson, have been using AI to construct long lost paintings that were discovered via x-ray beneath existing works of art. So the AI basically takes samples of that particular artist's other work to recreate as accurately as possible. On image based on this single x-ray image. Um, so this project is called Neomasters and so far they've recreated works from Picasso and Van Gogh so really big name artists whose works have just really never been seen by the public. And they have also recently launched a new project called TextMasters, in which they use the software and DALL-E 2 where they reconstruct long lost paintings just based on their text descriptions, which is, to me, this just sounds so crazy. Right?
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah.
Natalie Larsen: I think one of their most reconstructions with that was a Leonardo DaVinci piece where they just took a description of a painting of his, and it recreated this image.
Maraika Lumholdt: Did you see it? Does it look similar to the..?
Natalie Larsen: I did not see it. Going back to the topic of NFTs, they're actually selling these images on known origin.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah.
Natalie Larsen: As NFTs.
Maraika Lumholdt: Of course.
Natalie Larsen: To me another question of who is the legal owner of, of these images? Is it, you know, this team of three people that's recreating the images? Is it the original artist? Is it the AI? Is it some weird combination?
Maraika Lumholdt: That is a really good question. And maybe in the state of Washington or Pennsylvania, going have to be taxed on these, yeah, someday. No, that's super interesting. And like you said, show it to people that have never seen these lost works before, which I think is really interesting. But then all of a sudden you put a commercial spin on it. And it's not just for society to benefit from seeing these artworks, now you're putting cost on it and limiting access and adding these next layers that I think can, I don't wanna say it's all bad, but can detract from the positive net community benefits I think it could have, right?
Natalie Larsen: The cultural preservation aspect of this project is, is really important and really valuable. But then like you said, putting that kind of commercial spin on it is, is questionable for sure. Especially when it comes to NFTs.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yes, exactly. Which raises a whole other set of potential ethical concerns.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah. But I wanted to bring up the story because I thought it was interesting. I thought it was just a good example of AI being used for some good in the art world.
Maraika Lumholdt: Yeah. I know we've seen a lot of examples of technology being used to recreate historical, cultural sites in a way where museums don't have, you know, essentially steal artifacts from a country that's not their own to present in their country. And I think that's a way to combat some of the colonialist practices that persist in art museums around the world. This is obviously slightly different, not necessarily reconstructing something that people might have access to otherwise in a different place, but overall, that effort seems to be one that's gaining in popularity, and I wonder if AI could ever play a role in that. I'm not sure. Well, Natalie, thank you so much for talking with me today. This was super interesting and always good to have a little digestible way of keeping up with all the trends in the crazy world of art and technology.
Natalie Larsen: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for having me today, Maraika.
Thank you for listening to Tech and the Arts. Be on the lookout for new episodes coming to you very soon. If you found this episode informative, educational, or inspirational, be sure to send this to another arts aficionado in your life. You can let us know what you thought by visiting our website, amt-lab.org. That's amt-lab.org or you can email us at amtlabcmu@gmail.com. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at Tech in the Arts, or Facebook or LinkedIn at Arts Management at Technology Lab. We'll see you for the next episode.