120 Comments
User's avatar
Sean Spence's avatar

And the AI images all required the unattributed unpaid appropriation of original material by actual artists. The greatest IP theft imaginable.

Expand full comment
Debbie Liu's avatar

Hallelujah! !!!!!

At the very least, can't any creative ( writer, artist, whatever) see that by using gen-ai they are contributing to their own quick decline? Fun fact, gen-ai is industrial level theft. Grand Theft Creative on steroids to the max. I don't understand how any creative could think its okay to use it.

thanks for all the great links!

Expand full comment
Stephanie Vee's avatar

Some of them truly can’t see it, apparently. There’s a long tradition of online writers in particular reusing artwork without permission or attribution. I was guilty of it myself in my earliest days of blogging circa the early 2000s. Many were. A number of us fortunately realized how damaging this was to artists and stopped doing it. Others saw no problem with it and kept doing it because it was a lot easier to nick images from Google searches than it was to do the right thing.

I expect the latter camp are often the same people now using GenAI for the images that accompany their posts, and will be the same people sitting there with shocked Pikachu expressions on their faces when “superintelligent” Artificial General Intelligence has rendered most human jobs redundant. Some predict AGI will be here by 2029, if not earlier. Bet they’ll wish they’d refused to use or support GenAI when all their freelance gigs shrivel up overnight…

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

It’s where the (incorrect) perception that anything posted online is ‘Fair Use’; an argument now conveniently used by AI companies to justify their wholesale theft of copyrighted works for training models.

Expand full comment
Stephanie Vee's avatar

Yes, "fair use" has to be one of the most ill-understood (and abused) legal concepts in existence. People who just couldn't be bothered to put in a bit of effort act as though "fair use" is something just floating out there in the ether that "applies" to them. They assume they can say "well, I'm using my writing to educate, so it's fair use to paste this nice artwork I didn't create into my Google AdSense-enabled blog," without understanding that fair use is merely a legal defense one can argue for in a copyright infringement case. It is up to a JUDGE to determine whether or not reuse of an image is "fair use" -- not the individual reusing the image.

Sam Altman and co. didn't get the memo either. Or chose not to.

Expand full comment
J Michael Gatlin's avatar

Might I also suggest reaching out to real-life, living and working artists, whose work you’d like to support and encourage, to cross promote each other’s work? Surely we could work something out!!

Expand full comment
Charlotte Henley Babb's avatar

Several of these are new to me. I have used AI for my science fiction story headers, but not for my writing.

Expand full comment
Enoch Fagbenja's avatar

Thank you so much Jordan!

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Very welcome, Enoch!

Expand full comment
AntoDiNetto's avatar

Agree 100% My personal policy is not to read essays that use a generative AI image.

IMO those images devalue the writing. It’s hard to explain the feeling when I see it. But given the current hellscape we are in I am trusting my instincts.

Expand full comment
Michaela Ahonen's avatar

Www.webumenia.sk for Slovak art! 💖

Expand full comment
ann schneider's avatar

Thanks for the information! I did not know about some of it. As for the AI …it has a “look” I truly dislike. All of it!

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Very welcome 🙏

Expand full comment
Helena Wren's avatar

There’s also Pexels, Pixabay, Dupe Photos and wikipeadia commons

Expand full comment
Isabelle Germino's avatar

Booking mark this list! I've used Pixabay in the past, but it has a somewhat limited pool of images

Expand full comment
Martin Hjorth Frederiksen's avatar

Thanks so much for these. The National Gallery of Denmark has also started sharing public domain works: https://www.smk.dk/en/article/free-download-of-images/

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Many thanks for this, Martin!

Expand full comment
Emese-Réka Fromm's avatar

Thank you for sharing this!

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Very welcome 🙏

Expand full comment
Tim Fenton's avatar

Brilliant! Saving this! Thanks so much!

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Very welcome, Tim!

Expand full comment
Lauren Naughton's avatar

Thank you for sharing these great resources. I don’t like the use of AI - for our own brains, imagination and intellectual property, but also its huge environmental impact. Sure it’s helpful in some forms and industries, but we’ve managed for decades without it in the creative and business world, let’s keep it that way!

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Very welcome, Lauren.

Expand full comment
Dr Vicki Connop's avatar

Thank you for your generosity in sharing these resources. I tend to use Unsplash, though I do find that the images I choose appear on other people's writing too. Whenever possible I opt for my own images of nature, though I'm not the world's best photographer, just happen to live in a beautiful place 😊

Expand full comment
Jordan Acosta's avatar

Very welcome, Vicki.

Expand full comment
Jess | Wellness with Depth's avatar

That was nice!

Expand full comment