Art By MTG Artists Scraped By AI, Developing Lawsuit Claims
According to a spreadsheet shared on Twitter on December 31st, 2023, an AI trainer for Midjourney has scraped art from many artists for Magic: The Gathering. In a thread containing the spreadsheet (sourced to the website CourtListener), the AI trainer scraped many art pieces for Midjourney. This includes Karla Ortiz, one of the initial plaintiffs in the case of Andersen et al v. Stability AI. Other plaintiffs include Grzegorz Rutkowski, Gerald Brom, and various others. Perhaps most egregious is the indiscriminate scraping of the art of 6-year-old Hyan Tran, a one-time Magic artist whose sole art contribution has thus far been the Extra Life Secret Lair printing of Metalwork Colossus.
In the Twitter thread, Midjourney's developers allegedly plotted to curate an artist list from which to train Midjourney. The discussion has since been submitted as evidence against the defendants.
Midjourney developers caught discussing laundering, and creating a database of Artists (who have been dehumanized to styles) to train Midjourney off of. This has been submitted into evidence for the lawsuit. Prompt engineers, your “skills” are not yourshttps://t.co/wAhsNjt5Kz pic.twitter.com/EBvySMQC0P
— Jon Lam #CreateDontScrape (@JonLamArt) December 31, 2023
Those reading the spreadsheet noted that it included a few Magic designers as well. Cards like Look at Me, I'm the DCI and the test card Seasoned Weaponsmith were illustrated by designers Mark Rosewater and Mark Gottlieb, respectively, and therefore these designers were not below the art scraping, despite their decidedly-lesser standard of illustration (with no offense meant to either Mark).
Funny thing about scraping MTG artist names: Occasionally, they have the game’s designers make art for the cards rather than artists. The designers are obviously credited for their art the same way artists are, and the scraper found them pic.twitter.com/7rKkXn7KT5
— average owl enjoyer 🐀 (@YellowPie12) December 31, 2023
Concerning The Art Of Hyan Tran, Age 6
Ultimately, our concerns came to a boil when Hyan Tran's name came up. Tran was only 6 when the card was released in 2021. Tran collaborated with the likes of veteran Magic artist Chris Rahn (also seemingly unspared by the scraping) for the Extra Life Secret Lair drop. Now, it seems that Midjourney has allegedly stolen the art style of a child. If that isn't nearly the textbook definition of stealing candy from a baby, we don't know what is.
There were also a couple of times they got some kids from a children’s hospital to make the art and donated some of the proceeds from those cards to the hospital. The scraper seems to have ignored the kids who didn’t have their last name included, but it did hit Hyan Tran, age 6 pic.twitter.com/p4qbvkqRmI
— average owl enjoyer 🐀 (@YellowPie12) January 1, 2024
This case appears justified to us. If you believe that AI art is illegitimate, consider supporting living human artists where you can. There are so many who have had work scraped by the Midjourney trainer that we can't list them all ourselves. If there are any Magic artists you like and want to support, consider heading to their most convenient art hub. Indeed, that may be the most appropriate way to assist them outside of financial support.
