AIBU that I am upset over a tattoo design?

[Lemonypaintpots]

Hello,

sorry this is a little long so please bear with me!

Backstory- I am currently doing an illustration degree, as a mature student and the rise of AI was right around my first year. It is well known that AI has stolen many artworks that are published online to feed into their generators and AI is a big threat to illustrators. My husband and I have had many conversations about AI and he knows my views and knows I do NOT want my work put into any of these. I am a quiet and introverted person, and I don’t generally show my work much to anyone but I am gradually building up more confidence. I have loved art and drawing all my life and by no means new to it,

Moving on to the tattoo- He specifically asked if he could do one of my drawings- and requested a few alterations, which I did. He seemed very happy with the design, and booked in to get it done. I was having a small tattoo done as well so we booked to share a time slot.

Well yesterday was tattoo day. I checked again with him in the morning that he was happy with the design. He said he was, and that he was going to have a small alteration- to add my name into it. As there is a space where this could work, I thought nothing more of it, as I know the tattooist could easily incorporate it.

We got to the studio and began filling out the forms. Whilst he was filling his out, the tattooist asked which design he was going for- mine or the AI. This was news to me and I wondered what was going on. He immediately said, the AI one and asked my opinion. The tattooist showed me the screen with the AI image. I was mortified. I was completely put on the spot, and on the screen was this image with the same items as my drawing, but completely different style. It was very obvious it was AI, the positions had all changed as well, and he could see my reaction wasn’t positive. He tried to explain himself, saying that mine wasn’t very clear so he ran it through AI to sharpen it up. But It’s a completely different image. I just said, well it’s your tattoo so go for whatever you are happy with.

I went off to have mine done, silently furious he put my work into AI, and so embarrassed- that he told me he wanted my design- was it not good enough? I was also embarrassed that he put me on the spot, and that my name was going to be put in the middle of an AI image after hours of hard work making a design.

Later on he showed me, and honestly, It looks AI. When we got home, I expressed my views about AI again, and asked why he did it. He genuinely didn’t expect my reaction, and claimed he forgot to tell me that he ran it through, that he wanted the elements to be different proportions, and sees this AI image as my design. It only has the same objects in- it looks nothing like my style or design at all. Bear in mind I asked several times if there were any changes to be made, and he kept saying no. I explained how I felt, why it bothers me etc. We both hate confrontation, so he just shut down conversation about it and nothing more has been mentioned about tattoos at all. I noticed he has chosen to keep it covered up since. He seems to genuinely not understand my reaction, and I am just so embarrassed that he chose AI, embarrassed that my name is in the middle of it when it’s not my work, and most of all I am disappointed that he hid this all from me until the moment- he clearly knew my opinion and we have never hid things from each other. It’s not like I didn’t ask if there were any further alterations either! It has completely put me off finishing my degree, if my own husband cannot even support me over AI-

So AIBU?

I would let him know that you are not to be credited for the design when asked about the tattoo. I would feel very betrayed and be very annoyed my name was in it, he turned something lovely into something shit imo.

As for giving up the degree, maybe you should have a think about it but not blame him. Times are different and you need to weigh up your options as you are only at the half way point.

Do you not understand that it is the AI climate as a whole, which is really threatening illustrators, that is upsetting her and making it feel pointless to finish? Kick in the teeth that even her own husband doesn't get that, though.

I am a fiction writer and anyone who did the equivalent to me would be dead to me. AI is a shitfest.

What are you bollocksing on about. She's training to be a professional illustrator, her husband asked for her design, what the hell does self-publishing have to do with it 😂It's not like she only wants praise, that's a totally unfair thing to imply. She doesn't want her work altered by AI without her permission.

If my DP did that, he knows he'd be out on his ear.

Im an illustrator, he knows part of the job is taking a brief, making alterations etc until the client is happy with the piece.

When I designed his latest tattoo (like you, he asked me to do that) thats exactly what we did, I came up with a few ideas, he picked the closest one, we tweaked it together until he was happy.

I think the underlying issue though is that he's not listening to you, and neither of you are able to say things to the other that might feel confrontational. So he ran your work through AI because he'd not fully listened to the 'I DO NOT WANT MY WORK FED INTO GENERATIVE AI' and he didn't want to 'confront' you to ask for changes.

You need to sort that or your relationship is going to continue along the same lines and just get worse and worse.

Don’t quit your degree because of this. That’s just ridiculous.

He obviously shouldn’t have put your work through AI knowing your strong feelings about this. If he wanted it refining, I’m absolutely certain the tattooist (who is also obviously an artist) was more than capable of this.

Having said that, threatening to not finish your degree as a result is insane.

Has he actually uploaded your design into AI plus change suggestions , or did he type in the ideas from your design , like “design me a tattoo with a kettle, brick and sunflower”?

No, that's not quite correct. The AI image cannot (currently) be classed as IP of either the software developer, owner of the model or end user. OP will always retain the rights to her own work and there are several law suits in process at the moment in regards to AI training models in relationship to original IP.

That's not the case at all.

AI systems are tools, not legal persons. They cannot own copyright because copyright law requires human authorship.

Uploading your photo, artwork or design to an AI editor does not transfer ownership. The original copyright remains with the person who created it (assuming it was originally copyrightable).

Most AIs state in their terms that you retain ownership rights to your inputs and outputs.

Simple rules to remember:

• The AI does not own anything.
• The original creator keeps rights in the base image.

All AI has been trained on other people’s creative and/or intellectual work. You could make the adjustments using the technology we had five years ago but you use AI.

Try having a conversation with him again about how what he did played into your insecurities, and find out how he was looking at it. The man obviously loves you, and respects you as an artist. As other people have said, this may be a good chance for you to work on understanding each other better.

No, Generative AI has been trained on other artists work (in this context).

Other AI, for example some of the processes you used to have to do manually in a photo editing program like lightening a background or cloning one area and putting it in another, is not the same thing.

You are now going to ruin your relationship because you didn't stop him when you had the chance, but instead trotted off to have your own tatt. It's done now, he has your name on his skin, and you are going to have to drop it or it will be a festering argument forever.

That's good to know.