Foregrounding Artist Opinions: A Survey Study on Transparency, Ownership, and Fairness in AI Generative Art

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are used to create art-like outputs and aid in the creative process. While these tools have potential benefits for artists, they also have the potential to harm the art workforce and infringe upon artistic and intellectual property rights. Without explicit consent from artists, Generative AI creators scrape artists' digital work to train Generative AI models and produce art-like model outputs at scale. These outputs are now being used to compete with human artists in the marketplace as well as being used by some artists in their generative processes to create art. We surveyed 459 artists to investigate the tension between artists' opinions on Generative AI art's potential utility and harm. This study surveys artists' opinions on the utility and threat of Generative AI art models, fair practices in the disclosure of artistic works in AI art training models, ownership and rights of AI art derivatives, and fair compensation. We find that artists, by and large, think that model creators should be required to disclose in detail what art and images they use to train their AI models. We also find that artists' opinions vary by professional status and practice, demographics, whether they have purchased art, and familiarity with and use of Generative AI. We hope the results of this work will further more meaningful collaboration and alignment between the art community and Generative AI researchers and developers.