More many names can par with the likes of Picasso or Leonardo Da Vinci.
But in the world where generative AIs has become common, one particular digital artist's style of work has been replicated over 400,000 times, surpassing the two legendary artists.
Among others, keywords like "Greg Rutkowski" have became synonymous with the easy generation of high-quality AI art generation when using Stable Diffusion v1.4 and 1.5.
Greg, a Polish illustrator known for his vivid, surreal style, has become immensely popular among enthusiasts of AI-generated artworks, that his works are already at the center of the AI art world.
The thing is, he wanted nothing to do with the technology.
Greg dislikes his fame because he gained it from AI works that were created without his consent, and this leads to the confusion between his genuine works and AI-generated pieces.
"My work and future are under a huge question mark."
Greg who himself struggled to differentiate between AI-generated pieces and his genuine works, has become one of AI art's fiercest critics.
As an artist, he sees the risk of the AIs to his, and his fellow artists' livelihoods.
He becomes worried about AI arts diluting human creativity and threaten art education.
Because of this, Greg decided to vocally oppose the AI trend, even when it boosted his fame to a height he may never be able to reach alone.
Responding to Greg's decision, Stability AI, the creator of the popular AI image generator Stable Diffusion, responded by removing his work from its dataset.
This should prevent Stability AI from learning from Greg's works, preventing the AI from generating further works that mimic his style.
To suppress this even further, Stability AI released Stable Diffusion 2.0.
This updated version no longer allows users to emulate the style of specific artists, including Greg's.
The thing is, Stable Diffusion 2.0 is considered a "nerfed" update, and had problems reproducing human anatomy, and required a whole new and more difficult technique for prompting.
And also because the community loves Greg's work, and that Greg's name has become so synonymous with AI-generated art, Stability AI cannot stop Greg's work from ever regenerated by the AI.
The community created an alternative they call 'LoRa'.
What it does, is having the ability to mimic Greg's distinctive artistic style.
So again, people are trying to mimic Greg's work against his consent.
But Stable Diffusion, being open source, makes it impossible for Greg or any other creator to literally stop the replication of his style.
The LoRa model, which specializes in emulating specific art styles, was created to fill the void left by Greg's exclusion in Stable Diffusion 2.0.
The community has made the tool freely available, meaning that anyone can recreate Greg's style with accuracy.
"Since this artist name was one of the most used in 1.5 prompts and now it's gone, I thought it was a good idea to train a LoRA," said Lykon, the creator of the model.
However, the move to create the LoRa model has sparked controversy within the art community.
Some argued that it is unethical to train AI on an artists' works if they explicitly asked not to, while others believed that since Greg’s art had already been circulating in Stable Diffusion for years, there is no reason to not include it again.
While there is debate about the ethics of replicating Greg Rutkowski’s style against his wishes, the AI art community continues to push boundaries and challenge the traditional art world.
The evolving relationship between artists and AI is blurring the line between innovation and infringement, leading to an ongoing discussion about the impact of AI on the art world.
While Lykon said that he wants to concede to Greg, he said he believes he is acting on behalf of the greater good.
"If he contacts me asking for removal, I'll remove this." Lykon said. "At the moment I believe that having an accurate immortal depiction of his style is in everyone's best interest."
