In lieu of a living, breathing illustrator, Maricopa ARTS Council is using an AI image generator that’s accused of stealing from real artists.
The nonprofit that claims to “search for artistic excellence” blasted out a news release Friday to promote one of its upcoming arts events. In an audacious display, the council did something the broader arts community calls hypocritical and harmful.
It begs the question of why?
The council was co-directed by Maria Pour, a Maricopa High School graphic arts teacher, from 2014 until last year. Chantelle Fulce, the visual arts co-director from 2022 to 2023, is a graphic designer who still lives and works in Maricopa. The MAC logo was created by graphic designer Carl Diedrich, a Maricopa man, in 2013.
But that was long before Adobe started selling Firefly, an AI-powered image generator that cuts out real artists to create instant, low-quality, perfectly square visuals for the low price of between $10 and $200 per month — zero effort or skill required.
SightEngine, a leading deepfake detector and moderator, analyzed the images in the Friday news release and determined with 99 percent accuracy that the MAC images were created with GenAI, namely Firefly.
Artists (with heartbeats) have slammed Adobe for training its Firefly AI on their images. Meanwhile, experts warn that “legal risks loom for Firefly users” because it may train on artists’ copyrighted work, according to a damning Bloomberg report.
To add another layer of irony, Friday’s MAC news release was headered: “The Arts brighten our lives, even as they reveal the core of our humanity.”
This art, however, was devoid of any humanity.
Judith Zaimont, a co-founder and current co-director of the council, said the image was generated last year by the Sedona Poetry Slam Group.
“Of course, Maricopa ARTS Council is dedicated to our city’s human creative sector, and we wouldn’t ordinarily put forward work by any [type] of robotic machine,” Zaimont told InMaricopa Friday, “but MAC does not have a graphic artist at the ready.”
Zaimont noted MAC’s current board of four co-directors includes a painter specializing in atmospheric, landscape-forward works.
