Who is the original creator in the AI Generated Artwork "Dream" by Wombo?

Review by Betina Borza

Artificial intelligence (AI) generated artwork has become increasingly popular over the past few years. However, the use of AI to create art raises a few questions that impact the art community. For instance, who is the original creator of the artwork? The user or the creator of the AI code? 

Dream by Wombo is an AI text-to-image generator that may use VEGAN-CLIP networks to create unique artworks (Lønvik 7; Crowson 2). Dream generates art based on two factors, a two-hundred-word limit prompt and a selected chosen style. Users can pick from 39 art styles to help the generator understand the desired outcome. Users also have the ability to upload their art or images and have Dream alter them (Wombo.ai). 

Who is the original creator of the AI artwork and copyright holder? By default every person that creates something artistic, and can prove they made it is automatically the copyright holder (Office). However, when a person only wrote a few lines of text and an AI did the rest, who is the original creator? 

According to Dream, they consider the users the creator of the art. Their website and app publish the users, and they state “created by…” (Wombo.ai) underneath artworks, as well as providing the prompt and style the users chose. This unveils another question if I were to copy someone's prompt and their style, and the AI created a similar generation, would I be copying the user's work since it is not my original idea? 

For instance, user “dragonfaether” (Wombo.ai) on Dream has a very distinct style of artwork he generates. However, a simple copy and paste of one of his prompts and the AI can generate an artwork that fits in with his creations. Therefore, if the only aspect of Dream that is completely original, which is the text, is wholly copied, who is the originator? The person who came up with the concept or the person who copied and pasted the text? This demonstrated the blurred line that comes along with AI-generated artworks, clearly marking distinct points in when an artwork or idea is copied is crucial to the future of AI art. 

The originator or the artwork is neither the user who writes a prompt nor the people who wrote the code, but the art belongs to the AI. For instance, if someone were to write a prompt to draw an elephant, and a real-life person was to draw that elephant, who does the drawing of the elephant belong? The artist who drew the elephant. Furthermore, an AI robot named Sophia is considered a citizen of Saudi Arabia. Therefore, it is not far-fetched to consider an AI the creator of original art (Retto, 2017). 

The future of AI is unknown. Therefore, the future of AI art could lead to several different outcomes. A potential outcome is that every art supposedly created by users of Dream to date could become the property of the Dream AI. 

Works Cited: 

Crowson, Katherine, et al. "Vegan-clip: Open domain image generation and editing with natural language guidance." arXiv preprint arXiv:2204.08583 2 (2022). 

Lønvik, André Tørlen. "An overview of Artificial Intelligence; Application, user experience and ethical problems." (2021). 

Office, Canadian Intellectual Property. “Government of Canada.” Canadian Intellectual Property Office, / Gouvernement du Canada, 15 Sept. 2022. 

Retto, Jesús. "Sophia, first citizen robot of the world." ResearchGate, URL: https://www. researchgate. net (2017). 

Wombo.ai (n.d.) dream. Available at: https://app.wombo.art/ 

The ease of use and the seamless collaboration of web-based UI tools

Review by Sarosh Chopra

UI design tools have increasingly become more sophisticated over the last decade. The most prominent software for UI design, Sketch, was released in 2010. It became popular as it focused primarily on UI design and was easy to use. Adobe inc. and Figma inc. decided to release their UI design software products in 2016 called Adobe Xd and Figma. Similar to Sketch, Adobe Xd also needs to be installed on a computer for users to get access. However, Figma inc. decided to release its software as an online service, eliminating the need to install software on a computer. 

 The work on Figma began in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace, who were studying computer science at Brown College then. Before finalizing Figma as an online UI design tool, the co-founders experimented with ideas such as creating software for drones and a meme generator.

According to the co-founders, the goal behind creating Figma was to provide a free, simple creative tool accessible on an internet browser. In June 2013, Figma raised $3.8 million in seed funding. In December 2015, the company raised $14 million in Series A funding. Figma was officially released to the public on September 27, 2016. 

As a professional UX designer, I have used all the UI software available in the past few years, including Adobe Xd, Axure RP, Sketch, and Figma. I have to say that Figma is the best UI design tool in terms of User Experience. 

The unique selling point of Figma is that it is entirely cloud-based. It is accessible on any computer or tablet with an internet connection. The files created by users get saved on the cloud, eliminating the need to occupy the hard disk space of their devices, as well as creating an automatic backup of the files. Due to Figma being cloud-based, designers' collaboration is easier than ever. "Common design problems like file versioning and real-time collaboration aren’t an issue for Figma. Designers can work together, or make changes on their own, and those changes are reflected across the file in real-time with a complete revision history. To share something new, they can simply send over a link," states Nitin Naresh. The only drawback of Figma is that it requires an internet connection. 

However, currently, the internet has become ubiquitous. Figma has set a new standard for UI design tools and is a product made by designers for designers. It has gained immense popularity among creative professionals, with over 4 million users. On September 15, 2022, Adobe Inc. announced it had entered into a definitive merger agreement to acquire Figma for approximately $20 billion in cash and stock. The combination of Adobe and Figma will usher in a new era of collaborative creativity. 

Works Cited 

Dylan Field, "A new collaboration with Adobe" September 15, 2022 

Josh Constine, "23-Year-Old’s Design Collaboration Tool Figma Launches With $14M To Fight Adobe" December 3, 2015.

Josh Constine, "21-Year-Old Thiel Fellow Raises Three-Point-Eight Million Dollars For Figma" June 26, 2013.

Jordan Crook, "Figma gets $40 million Series C to put design tools in the cloud" Febuary 14, 2019. 

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