Mickey Mouse and Darth Vader smoking pot: AI image generators play fast and loose with copyrighted characters

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I tested six leading AI image generators to see how they handle outrageous requests.

AI Generated Image from Midjourney
AI Generated Image from Midjourney (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The NY Times filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft last month for training on and reproducing its copyrighted articles without permission. But the problem of AI models abusing copyrighted content goes way beyond text and journalistic output. The leading AI image generators will reproduce copyrighted characters and even show them doing brand-inappropriate things that would likely shock the media companies that own them. 

Want to see Mickey Mouse, whose original Steam Boat Willy design just entered the public domain, drinking and imbibing illegal substances with his buddy, Darth Vader? If you want to go outside the Disney IP universe, you can just ask to see Bugs Bunny smoking with everyone’s favorite mouse. Almost all of the major image generators will happily oblige these and far-more-cringeworthy prompts, with very few restrictions.

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Avram Piltch
Avram Piltch
Managing Editor: Special Projects

Avram Piltch is Managing Editor: Special Projects. When he's not playing with the latest gadgets at work or putting on VR helmets at trade shows, you'll find him rooting his phone, taking apart his PC, or coding plugins. With his technical knowledge and passion for testing, Avram developed many real-world benchmarks, including our laptop battery test.

40 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    This case of copyright characters is an interesting question. If an artist draws Mickey Mouse & Darth Vader, in the privacy of their own home, I don't see anything inherently wrong with that. Using a tool to generate depictions of them feels similar. Where it would seem to cross a line is if they publish those depictions, without permission from the rights owner.

    I'm obviously not a lawyer, so it'll be interesting to see what the courts say about this. Even if the courts side with the rights owners, I don't think it necessarily spells doom for AI image generators. I can imagine both technical & business-level solutions to this problem.

    Part of me thinks it'd be funny if LLMs end up having to be trained only on public domain material, much of which is at least 95+ years old (the current limit on copyright). It'd be kinda funny if it tended to speak in an old-timey way.
    : D
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Know what else plays fast and loose with copyrighted characters? The hundreds of artists who every day take money from people to draw pictures of them without a license or consent, which is illegal. Why is that "okay" when using AI to do the same thing is not?
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    Know what else plays fast and loose with copyrighted characters? The hundreds of artists who every day take money from people to draw pictures of them without a license or consent, which is illegal. Why is that "okay" when using AI to do the same thing is not?
    It's not okay, but I think a big AI company is a much more interesting target for corporate lawyers than countless internet randos who collectively might not even have the assets to justify a single court case.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    Original art can't and doesn't exist in this era. Derivative works are not allowed to exist, they belong to the creator of the source material.
    There's only so many shapes that can be drawn and notes that can be played, and every major iteration and combination has already been stake-claimed in a copyrighted format.

    Think about it, if a normal person managed to create something wholly original, and a corporate giant stepped in and said they own it now, then they own it. You can't do anything about it; you can't fight it; You would lose everything else you own before even making it to court.
    If they can't take it outright, they'll still rip you off and algorithmically bury you. They own the platforms. Non corporate art is not allowed to be seen, therefore it doesn't exist.

    Everything you create is equally not-yours. So I say stop trying so hard to make something that will just be taken from you regardless. The risk is always the same, the punishment is always the same. So do what you want, with whatever you want.
    AI is fantastic for artists. We can take back some small part of our culture by simply overwhelming the systems designed to own us with low effort garbage.
    If the lawyers are busy dealing with this AI fad, then maybe some small sliver of artistic integrity or originality will finally have a chance to slip through the cracks and into popular culture.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Giroro said:
    There's only so many shapes that can be drawn and notes that can be played, and every major iteration and combination has already been stake-claimed in a copyrighted format.
    Reminds me of this notorious quote from over a century ago:
    "Everything that can be invented has been invented"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Holland_Duell
    Giroro said:
    Think about it, if a normal person managed to create something wholly original, and a corporate giant stepped in and said they own it now, then they own it. You can't do anything about it; you can't fight it; You would lose everything else you own before even making it to court.
    If they can't take it outright, they'll still rip you off and algorithmically bury you. They own the platforms. Non corporate art is not allowed to be seen, therefore it doesn't exist.
    If this were true, you ought to be able to list millions of examples where it's happened.

    I think you're too enthralled by your own dark fantasy. Or maybe just trying to make excuses to yourself for your own lack of success. Sadly, the market for popular art is extremely fickle and heavily trend-driven. Sometimes, there's no easy explanation of why one person breaks into pop culture and countless others don't.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    bit_user said:
    It's not okay, but I think a big AI company is a much more interesting target for corporate lawyers than countless internet randos who collectively might not even have the assets to justify a single court case.

    Patreon has enabled artists to make potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars a month on top of the price they charge for the art, so it would be very worth it for them to go after them.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    Patreon has enabled artists to make potentially hundreds to thousands of dollars a month on top of the price they charge for the art, so it would be very worth it for them to go after them.
    Perhaps, but I think it's like the top 0.01% who make anything like that kind of money, and are any of them blatant plagiarists (i.e. without the protection of satire*)?

    * In case you're not aware, the US Supreme Court has long ruled that satire is a constitutionally protected form of speech, and therefore isn't subject to claims of copyright-infringement.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    bit_user said:
    Perhaps, but I think it's like the top 0.01% who make anything like that kind of money, and are any of them blatant plagiarists (i.e. without the protection of satire*)?

    * In case you're not aware, the US Supreme Court has long ruled that satire is a constitutionally protected form of speech, and therefore isn't subject to claims of copyright-infringement.

    They wouldn't need to go after any but the biggest earners to stop services from taking their money.
    Reply
  • waltc3
    My opinion from the start was that "AI" is going to be a new bonanza for copyright lawyers...;) If you thought that the RIAA was bad medicine, you haven't seen anything yet. It's very simple--when you draw on databases including copyrighted artwork, you are infringing on copyrighted material. It's like all the Mario imagery is a clear copyright violation of Mario--it doesn't matter that it doesn't look identical to the official copyrighted imagery, all it has to do is to be similar enough that any normal person would easily conclude that he was looking at the original copyrighted material. And that will finish it, and it will die on the vine. Satire is a valid protected speech, but that's fairly limited because the satire must be evident and obvious to qualify. IE, you can't have the AI program use copyrighted imagery on its own and call it satire. That won't work--the satire has to be real, etc. You'd have to work the recognizable imagery of Mickey Mouse or Vader or Mario into an obviously satirical presentation. Not as easy as it sounds. And when all the recognizable copyrighted imagery is gone--there's no Vader, Mickey, or Mario in the images--what do you end up with except images unrecognizable by the viewer? (Like the "plumber" artwork that looks nothing like the original Mario character. He's a stranger.)

    So what about the images that don't look anything like Mario or Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, etc? The value of those dies quickly because no one would confuse those with the original copyrighted materials. Basically, AI in these iterations is an advanced form of cut & paste. I think it's a fad that will be short-lived as these things go once the litigation lawyers begin to get heavily involved as they will not be lenient in defining what is free of copyrighted material, I feel certain.
    Reply
  • BLAH1982
    Can really feel the wheels falling off the GenAI hype train. Starting to look more like a train wreck. Hubris of the highest order.
    Reply