it’s worse than that, the article talks about img2img using AI. so these click farms are ripping real images and using that as the img2img prompt
They are taking an artist work and reproducing it - changed slightly. If you did that to a Disney work (AI or not) would they consider it copyright or fair use?
Depends on what you are using it for.
“The general fair use definition is that fair use is any use of a work that is not done in an effort to profit from the copyrighted work.”
Disney considering it one way or the other doesn’t mean anything, legally speaking. It’s not so much about “used a reference” – you can take a movie still-frame and make an oil painting of it and it’ll be your work. It’s about that how the spammers use AI doesn’t have sufficient artistic intent, sweat of the brow, whatever your local standard is, to actually give you copyright over its output, as such it’s as if you had simply photocopied the thing. It certainly is possible to use AI in a way that gives you copyright over its output, even with img2img, but those people ain’t doing it. It’s also possible to photocopy that still-frame in a way that gives you copyright, e.g. if you collage and otherwise transform it in an artistic manner.
