The very popular social media platform TikTok often has many trends circulating its algorithm daily. Many users are fairly familiar with the trends that load our individual “For You” pages with repetitive and frequent videos of different people participating in the same trends. Maybe even some of you have participated in these trends. Speaking of these trends, if you are a user of TikTok, I’m sure a large number of different examples flood your memory. For instance, photos of dolphins paired with the song “Symphony” by Clean Bandit is a popular trend. Recently, a lot of these trends have used the editing app Capcut to create AI-generated photos of a user. An example of this could easily be the recent “Tim Burton” trend or “The Total Drama Island” trend. These trends take a pre-existing photo and edit that photo to make the subject look like they are animated in the world of different media. However, one of these AI-generated trends has a bit more gravity than many of the other examples of this genre of trend. This trend has been commonly referred to as the “Cartoon Character” trend. This trend uses Capcut to take a photo of a user and turn them into a very particular style of cartoon. Therefore, it uses AI to interpret a photo and reveal to the audience what a user could look like if they existed in this style of cartoon.
This kind of trend is not unheard of. In addition, because of how common and instant the use of AI is, people tend to forget how exactly AI is able to create these images. AI is usually looked down upon in the world of artistic creators. There have been many cases of AI taking art from established artists and using it to generate an image. If the artist isn’t told that their art style is being used to teach AI, and the AI creates an image with that artist’s work, this is plagiarism with the use of AI. AI needs to be taught something in order to be able to generate. So when AI trainers are feeding the computers texts, art and other kinds of information, the only thing the AI can do is use and alter it. In other words, AI is just as powerful as the information that human beings put into it. This means a lot of art that comes out of AI is based on a pre-existing artistic work. This is important to know when focusing on the topic of AI use in media trends.
In the recent “Cartoon Character” trend, people have started to put these pieces together. There is an artist on the platforms TikTok and Instagram whose art style is uncannily similar to what viewers see in the circulating trend. This really brings attention to the idea of AI stealing artwork and mass-creating plagiarism. What’s worse is that it has become a trend. This leads to millions of people contributing to plagiarism. The artist @jihadsillustration on TikTok, who also goes by Jihad, is the original creator of the art style that is seen in this trend. The artist has yet to really speak out on the matter but hundreds of examples of Jihad’s art are being copied and regenerated to steal this artist’s work.
AI is becoming a huge problem in the world of artistic creation. Whether it’s art, writing, ideas or essays, AI does not come up with original ideas. AI is trained with the works of other people, making nothing AI creates original. AI has every capability to get out of hand, and it is very possible that more and more artists will start to condemn the powers AI is now capable of. Hopefully, people will learn and adopt the idea that using a filter that was born as a result of stolen artwork is not exactly the most considerate idea for gaining a little more social media attention. People should embrace originality and not opt to contribute to stealing artwork from artists.
Payton Vogt is a second-year English major.