Representatives of the Old Lion Publishing House, which publishes books by Ukrainian and foreign authors for all age groups, announced the release of a poetry collection illustrated by artificial intelligence. The image for Maryna Ponomarenko’s book “The Book of Love and Fury” was created using the Midjourney neural network.
To design the collection, artist Ksenia Zabrodska used generated AI images, processing and finalizing them independently. As the representatives of the publishing house emphasized, Zabrodska has an official subscription to Midjourney, so she has the right to dispose of images created by AI.
One of the pages of Maryna Ponomarenko’s collection “The Book of Love and Fury”, published on the official website of “Stary Lev Publishing House”. Image generated by Midjourney. On their Facebook page, representatives of the publishing house published an excerpt from a legal opinion on Midjourney’s use of AI in print, which allows the publication of AI-generated images with a paid subscription. “Before using artificial intelligence to work on illustrating the book, we consulted with lawyers about its legality and nuances of copyright and received the appropriate conclusions.” – explained in “Stary Lev Publishing House”.
In the comments, the majority of users reacted to the news positively, however, there were also those who consider the use of AI images to be a violation of copyright. “And in general, do you know that AI takes as a basis the work of artists who did not give consent for its use? I’m sure you have artists who are willing to create beauty, but instead you violate copyright and use AI.” – wrote Anna Perle, a subscriber of “Stary Lev Publishing House”.
We will remind you that books and comics, in the creation of which AI took part, caused scandals on the network more than once. Thus, in December, representatives of the United States Copyright Registration Office (USCO) revoked the permission to recognize copyright both for the artificial intelligence algorithm and for the person who managed the creation of the Dawn of the Dawn comic. In the same month, the author of the children’s book Alice and Sparkle faced a barrage of criticism on social media and even death threats, all because of the use of artificial intelligence in his work.
