Like a lot of people, when I first heard of the AI-powered Lensa image app, I installed it and created a bunch of cool portraits of myself. They were stunning. It was like having a great artist paint my portrait. I immediately shared them with some friends in Slack, asking them which one I should use for my cool new avatar.
Have I mentioned that my friends are REALLY SMART? One of them immediately replied:
The thing I’ve read about Lensa, though, is that they use Subtle Diffusion… and that was built on stolen art
Also, they own your images and your face data in perpetuity and you’re training their AI
I immediately felt like the world’s biggest traitor. Here I am, the creator of Patron Hunt, a site dedicated to HELPING artists. And I’d gone and supported something STEALING from artists. I was aghast and filled with self-loathing.
The creators of these AI driven image apps use millions of images scraped from sites like DeviantArt to “train” the AI. They do this without reimbursing or crediting the artists. Worse, it’s clear that literal pieces of the scraped art, itself, are used in the images created by the AI. In fact, remnants of artists’ signatures can frequently be seen in the AI generated images!
As one of my other smart friends said
oof this is why we can’t have nice things
Well, you know what? WE CAN HAVE NICE THINGS AND WE DON’T NEED TO STEAL THEM.
For close to the price of the Lensa app, you can commission an incredibly talented, living, breathing, human artist to create a truly one-of-a-kind portrait that you can use as an avatar. Your money will go to the artist, where it belongs. And your portrait won’t look like a cheap copy of everybody else’s.
I went through the over 1100 independent artists we have profiled on Patron Hunt and found 18 to recommend who accept commissions. I’m certain you’ll see at least one whose style appeals to you. If you’ve been thinking about using Lensa or any other AI image app to create a new avatar or other artwork, take your hard earned money and use it to commission it from one of these amazing artists instead.
Let’s have some fun now and check out the artists. If you hire one of them to create your avatar, I’d love for you to share it where ever you find Patron Hunt on social media. (See our site’s footer.)
-Kirsten
