The concept of "derivative work" is pretty important in copyright law. I wonder if anyone has thoughts on this, in terms of this type of project. Should there be legal implications to this?
I know someone -- a completely unknown artist -- who used to make a fair portion of their living by drawing D&D characters for people. Unfortunately, orders slowed down, because someone can input one of his images into software like this, and generate endless variations in the same style. Should this be allowed?
Are images created "in the style of" a certain artist completely dependent on images created by that artist? If so, should that artist be compensated? Why or why not?
A human artist can freely paint something in the style of another artist. It's not considered a derivative work. You can't copyright a style.
A derivative work is an adaptation, translation, or modification of a particular, existing copyrighted work.
If you asked Stable Diffusion for "Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night with a cat looking at the sky", you'd get a derivative work (although Starry Night is in the public domain, so you wouldn't be violating its copyright).
I know someone -- a completely unknown artist -- who used to make a fair portion of their living by drawing D&D characters for people. Unfortunately, orders slowed down, because someone can input one of his images into software like this, and generate endless variations in the same style. Should this be allowed?
Are images created "in the style of" a certain artist completely dependent on images created by that artist? If so, should that artist be compensated? Why or why not?