From Van Gogh To Walt Disney To Andy Warhol ... And Even A 6-Year-Old Kid: Midjourney AI's Massive Art Database Leak Sparks Outcry

Artificial Intelligence firm Midjourney is under fire following the leak of a list containing artists whose work was used to train its AI program, sparking widespread backlash.

What Happened: Over the New Year’s weekend, a Google Sheet surfaced, exposing artists’ names linked to Midjourney’s AI training database, according to ARTnews.

Shared extensively on social media platforms X and Bluesky, the list encompasses a range of artists, from contemporary and modern blue-chip names to successful illustrators for corporations like Hasbro and Nintendo, even including a six-year-old child.

Midjourney’s promotional materials for its generative AI program reveal that the text-to-image generator was trained on this extensive database, offering detailed insights into periods, styles, genres, movements, mediums, techniques, and individual artists.

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The list features renowned figures such as Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Gerhard Richter, Frida Kahlo, Ellsworth Kelly, Damien Hirst, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Paul Signac, Norman Rockwell, Paul Cézanne, Banksy, Walt Disney, and Vincent van Gogh.

The dataset also includes artists who contributed to the popular trading card game “Magic: The Gathering,” notably Hyan Tran, a six-year-old contributor who participated in a fundraiser for a children's Hospital.

American cartoonist and comic book artist Phil Foglio encouraged artists to check the list for their names and seek legal representation if necessary. Although access to the Google file was restricted, a version has been archived on the Internet Archive.

The list initially formed part of a class-action complaint against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt, appearing online after access to the Google file was limited. It also served as supplementary evidence in a November lawsuit, totaling 455 pages.

Why It Matters: A class-action lawsuit initiated almost a year ago in the United States District Court of the Northern District of California gained attention when the U.S. Copyright Review Board ruled that an image generated using Midjourney's software couldn’t be copyrighted due to its production method.

Midjourney did not immediately respond to Benzinga’s request for comment.

In December, artists retaliated against the unauthorized use of their work by AI image generators, employing a “data poisoning” method to disrupt computer vision. Additionally, a study by the Stanford Internet Observatory shed light on AI image generators being trained on explicit images of children, highlighting the problematic nature of AI training databases.

Disclaimer – This image was generated using artificial intelligence.

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This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.