This post today isn’t about stolen images!

PS Facebook Page Discussion Post

This post is about misrepresentation by an industry leader who claims this is her art and offers classes and assets based on AI renderings she has appeared to have created with Midjourney.

Whether or not it is hers is currently a debate in the court system but the current ruling is that artwork generated by artificial intelligence is not eligible for copyright. There is some debate if entering the prompt is enough to give the “human input” part that makes it copyrightable and basically it seems to all depend on what court you land in but the Supreme Court seems to be upholding the idea it isn’t copyrightable.

On top of the above, Meg is using a platform that had faced criticism (even has a class action lawsuit) for stealing copyrighted works of art. Note: the legalese bascially says you can use these creations as you wish *but* you do not have a copyright to them and basically anyone with an account can download them from your gallery.

Late Monday night I sent out a substack post and talked a bit about Meg’s possible use of AI bots to create her new “medium” as she calls it on her page.

I wasn’t sure if it was AI so I tried to see how easy it would be to create some of these images and sure enough, it was not hard to get close enough to be able to write the post with some confidence that she was using AI as some part of her process. Especially when you looked at the art and saw some of the obvious AI tells like additional fingers.

Meg though posted a few times throughout the day saying it was HER art and outright denying AI by the end of the day saying it was an action and everything she’s learned.

Here’s some of the rebuttals against the allegations regarding AI:

Comments on various posts including the alleged AI artwork:

Don’t worry Dana, you too can teach anyone how to write, “whimsical watercolor illustrated…” into midjourney and have results!

Anyway, the substack started a discourse about the whole case.

Throughout the day I had been sent various things behind the scenes that were eye opening but none so much as this. NOTE: to view Meg’s profile you have to have an account with midjourney!

That’s just a small amount of Meg’s profile. Update on 9/27 in the evening – she has since made her work private and her username has changed. I downloaded everything she created though since I had a hunch she’d do this (reminder, this is legal per midjourney’s TOS).

Here’s a crash course in what the sources below that I’ll show you will look like.

At first I was curious if it was just a coincidence so I scrolled a bit and within a second or two I found this post on “megbitton’s” profile:

If you are unfamiliar with the platform what this is is showing the user “megbitton” and the artwork she got “upsized” from the grid of 4 images she got after using the prompt, “Whimsical painted watercolor illustrated posed portrait head and shoulders image of a beautiful 6 year old girl with shiny beautiful long brown hair blue eyes posed with hands against face head tilted to the side couture lace pastel pink silk dress high neck turtleneck carolina hererra meg bitton”

After that prompt in midjourney she got this group of 4 pieces:

She chose to upsize the 4th option (U4 if you’ve done this on the app).

At the bottom of each link you can click the “parent” to get the original grid for the upsized artwork Meg used.

Note that the date it was uploaded predates my post on 9/25.

Does this look familiar to you?

When I saw that match I decided sleep is for suckers and got to work.

I don’t have time to resource every bit and bob that Meg has posted that is “NOT AI” but I think I have enough to make my case solidly now that she is using AI in part or in whole depending on the piece to create her new “medium” in photography.

She also has used many of these pieces created in midjourney to sell on her assets page. I am not a lawyer so I can’t tell you if it’s legal or not but I thought it was worth noting.

Note again that the links I’m sharing will only work if you are a member of midjourney. Since most aren’t members, I’m adding a screencapture of the image on Meg’s profile after the link.

Continue reading Meg Bitton →