AI is producing ‘fake’ Indigenous art trained on real artists’ work without permission

People are training artificial intelligence on Indigenous art without the artists’ permission to create inauthentic works, which are selling online on platforms run by companies such as Adobe and eBay. 

Indigenous artists in Australia say their work is being stolen and turned into another threat to their livelihoods and cultures while they are already struggling to compete with the tens of millions of dollars worth of fake art produced every year by non-Indigenous artists.

Among the many jobs affected by the rapid development in generative AI, few have been as directly and immediately affected as visual arts workers. Usually trained on data scraped from the internet without permission, publicly available text-to-image generators let anyone produce instantaneously new images with just a few words.

While this new technology does add to the artist’s toolbox, workers say that AI is already taking their jobs. A group of researchers from Washington University and New York University analysed data from popular freelance platform Upwork and found that freelancers are already experiencing less employment and income since the launch of ChatGPT. 

Now, AI-generated Indigenous art is appearing on online marketplaces where art and derivative products are sold — often directly competing with the work from real Indigenous artists — despite the platforms often having policies that are supposed to protect Indigenous culture.

Both Adobe and Shutterstock run popular stock image websites where people can buy AI-generated images for a variety of commercial purposes. On each of them, there are dozens of fake Indigenous art-style images for sale (that have been marked on the platform as AI-generated). 

While many images are vaguely listed as being “Aboriginal” or “Indigenous”, some are more specific, like a Shutterstock image based on a prompt “Australian Aboriginal Art showing Gwion Gwion Bradshaw figures and Wandjina rock art depictions of the Kimberley Region in Western Australia”.

Adobe allows people to upload AI images for sale and earn money every time they’re purchased. The company requires sellers to only submit images for which they own the intellectual property, but it’s not clear how this is policed. Shutterstock sells images generated by users using the company’s on-site AI model trained on their images and as a result does not have this problem.

These images are already being used commercially. Adobe Stock image “An illustration based on aboriginal style of dot painting. AI Generative Art” appears as part of a graphic for a webpage about a panel hosted by the University of Western Australia on the Voice to Parliament referendum. Another example is childcare diary business Butler Diaries using an Adobe stock image as part of its web design. (The bottom of the company’s website features an Acknowledgement of Country that calls for the “continuation of cultural, spiritual and education practices” of Indigenous peoples.) 

These stock websites also feature AI-generated images of Indigenous peoples in the style of a photograph. They’re already being used on the internet, such as by the government-funded Mining and Skills Alliance, which features a picture of a generated woman to promote its efforts to “raise the profile of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women”.

AI-generated designs are also making it into the real world through other online marketplaces such as eBay and Etsy. Etsy is filled with cheap, digital AI-generated prints intended to be printed and framed, such as a $3.43 “Aboriginal Art print Australian Aboriginal Art Aboriginal Art Print Indigenous Art Australian Art Poster Australian Dot Art” whose seller notes in the listing “The images are my representation and I do not claim that they are anatomically or biologically correct”. Over on eBay, people sell goods with AI-generated goods like an “Aboriginal Art Culture Australia Cool Case Cover Silicone / Shockproof / MagSafe”.

Some of these platforms have policies that protect Indigenous intellectual property but it’s not clear whether they apply.

Adobe, which has a reconciliation action plan outlining the company’s various initiatives and objectives for helping Indigenous peoples achieve equality, has guidelines that state any content uploaded to its Stock service relating to race and ethnicity should be “correctly represented”. A spokesperson for the company didn’t answer questions about whether AI-produced Indigenous art violates this policy, instead giving a general statement: “We are continually auditing, evaluating, and improving the Adobe Stock collections to serve our customers’ needs,” it said.

eBay policies say sellers must not “list, sell or promote materials, products or services that use Indigenous cultural and intellectual property in an unauthorised way”, according to a spokesperson. Pressed on whether AI-generated art would violate this policy, they said how an artwork is created is irrelevant and that a listing “using Indigenous art in an unauthorised way” may breach it.

Neither Etsy nor Shutterstock responded to a request for comment. Etsy has a policy that prohibits users from selling items falsely listed as being produced by Indigenous peoples — but only in Northern America, and allows “Indigenous-style” products by non-Indigenous people. 

Amy Allerton is a Gumbaynggirr and Bundjalung woman who works as an artist and runs the Indigico Creative gallery, which sells original works and goods with Indigenous designs. She said art is hugely significant to her peoples’ cultures and that generating it through AI threatens the cultural integrity of their history.

“You’ve got non-Indigenous people being given the tools to create art based on our culture, which is a big no-no,” she told Crikey.

Allerton said the images that AI produces are “quite offensive” because of the mishmash of designs it produces. Many of the “Indigenous art” images produced by AI mix distinctive styles from different Indigenous nations and artists. 

Indigenous artists in Australia already face fierce competition from people producing “fake” Indigenous art, which are designs and products imitating Indigenous artists’ distinctive styles but produced by people with no connection to or with no benefit to Indigenous communities.

A 2022 Productivity Commission report found that 75% of Indigenous-style goods were created by non-Indigenous people. Online art businesses were particularly bad. One stock image site analysed by the commission had 80% of its Indigenous-style images authored by non-Indigenous people. Similarly, 60% of listings on a print-on-demand marketplace were also produced by non-Indigenous creators. 

Anthony Wallis runs Aboriginal Artists Agency, which helps artists earn income from the reproduction of their works. He said a significant amount of his work comes after the fact — when people and organisations use an artist’s work without their permission — and said it’s surprising how often enormous companies or important institutions don’t correctly license designs. He fears that AI will make this problem even worse.

“It’s frightening because it’s so cheap. It’s really dangerous from an artist’s point of view,” he said.

Allerton said it’s upsetting how AI models are being trained on Indigenous artists’ work without their permission and then used to generate work that competes directly with the artist.

“It’s a very colonial mindset that they are entitled to the entirety of us,” she said.

“Indigenous people don’t have the power for self-determination that we so want. This adds to the weight of all that. It’s like making me redundant. I think about myself, if I were made redundant, that would be devastating.”