Posted in: Comics, Current News, Music, Pop Culture, TV | Tagged: ai, william shatner

William Shatner's New Children's Album Under Fire Over Use Of AI

William Shatner posted the cover to his new children's album Where Will The Animals Sleep? with a cover that was created with AI.

William Shatner posted the news to social media, saying "You can pre-order my new children's album on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3UpyBtP". And indeed you can, Where Will The Animals Sleep? Songs For Kids & Other Living Things on the 17th of May. But also with a cover that pretty much everyone looking at it suspects is AI generated. Which has been criticised for stealing the work of actual artists to generate a mishmash purporting to be something new.

Comic book artists among many have made their feelings clear about this.

John McCrea: Don't use AI

Jamie Smart: "What in the Dear God That's Some Terrible AI is this. FFS his refusal to comprehend or even empathise with any artist other than himself."

Lew Stringer: His arms are different thicknesses.

Sebastián Píriz: the AI couldn't get his face right so they pasted a painted face (or a different AI image? ) that doesn't match at all the colors of the rest

Mike Armstrong: At least the AI is self-aware enough to hide all but four of the hands…

In response to criticism, William Shatner has posted "And I don't remember riots in the streets when @thebeatles released the white album, Metallica released their black album or the Soundtrack album for This is Spinal Tap were released. People these days are affronted over whatever their twisted minds think can get them attention & popularity. It's sad… Did the portrait artists of the 19th Century storm the house of Giroux over the development of the camera? And compared to cameras of today they are very antiquated so let progress happen. It's clearly meant to be an AI in its simplest form because it's a children's album not something to hang in a museum… Well sweetheart, the only image is of me and I approved it. That means your craycray hysteria argument is null. The actor's union issue was that studios could take moving images of previous acting jobs and repurpose the moving images and put them into an AI program for use in another production without permission. Next time if you are going to argue something, please make sure you understand the issue… Could you please point out the copyright violations‽ if not, then…"

William Shatner also looked to other people's takes on the classic American Gothic painting to back his position, saying "And those artists that "borrow" from other artist's works as a homage? That's stealing as well, right?… Each one of those 3 works is considered fine art but do you think they paid the Grant Wood foundation to create them? So if AI borrowed it to create its own version; it's wrong?" Not willing to brook any arguments about how homages were intentional references in which viewers were meant to know their origins, but his cover did its best to hide the people it stole from, he ended "So the cover is the cover. I've approved it and that's all there is to it. The end. Move on". Oh, just one more thing… "Here's the back cover."

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