Eunice Alpasan, WTTW; Popular Photo App Lensa Spurs Debate Over Ethics of Artificial Intelligence in Art
"For a few dollars, users can submit photos of themselves that the app will use to generate multiple self-portraits in different art styles using artificial intelligence technology.
But the app has also reignited concerns about the ethics regarding the use of artificial intelligence in art.
A.I. algorithms work by going into large datasets of work posted online from various sources to help photo apps like Lensa generate self-portraits for users in different styles, said Jennifer deWinter, dean of Lewis College of Science and Letters at Illinois Tech.
DeWinter said this presents a copyright issue, but because it’s a computer program generating the images, it makes it hard to trace back who is actually culpable. “It’s a problem of a giant, diffused system of multiple actors,” she said.
Kennedy Freeman, a student in fine arts at Columbia College and founder of the Black fem art collective HourNine, said seeing these generated portraits spreading on social media made her concerned about how her art and those of other artists are being used without permission to help train A.I. generators."
