It's a Byron Howard piece, you know, the director and original creator of Zootopia, and he tweeted it on his own private Twitter account. He didn't give me personal permission to use the art as an avatar, no, and furthermore he has no rights to Doctor Who (or the X-Files, though, actually, I think both are technically also kind of Disney properties now, too).
Fan artists, are by definition, fans; they are more than happy to ascribe correct ownership of characters. In fact, in the specific case of my avatar, I wrote an entire article explaining where my avatar came from; and I didn't even do that for ethical concerns, I did it because I wanted to. Fan artists (and us fan artist enjoyers) don't hide or try to sidestep the fact that they are using other people's work as inspiration because that's the fucking point. Furthermore, most of it is made to be freely shared, much like the original Byron Howard tweet. This is not "for profit", and a lot of AI is very much so. I mean, "bootlegging" is a thing, and that's a hard line to walk, but as long as things don't get too big, fan art is usually seen more as free advertising than stealing, and is in fact encouraged by many outlets (what would Nintendo Power have been without the fan-art section, or Mystery Science Theater 3000 without Cambot zooming in on crudely drawn robots on lined noteboke paper at the end of early Joel episodes, which, yes, is itself a show based on blatantly reusing earlier works. Keep circulating the tapes!).
I guess you could argue, if you were being truly fair, the same ethical issues that lie behind many arguments against generative AI could be applied to fan art, but the difference there is fan art is supposed to be supplementary to or even supportive of what it steals, while generative AI, we are told, is supposed to replace what it has been stealing from. A good parasite doesn't kill the host.
Well, umm, this piece is actually way more complicated then that.
It's a Byron Howard piece, you know, the director and original creator of Zootopia, and he tweeted it on his own private Twitter account. He didn't give me personal permission to use the art as an avatar, no, and furthermore he has no rights to Doctor Who (or the X-Files, though, actually, I think both are technically also kind of Disney properties now, too).
Fan artists, are by definition, fans; they are more than happy to ascribe correct ownership of characters. In fact, in the specific case of my avatar, I wrote an entire article explaining where my avatar came from; and I didn't even do that for ethical concerns, I did it because I wanted to. Fan artists (and us fan artist enjoyers) don't hide or try to sidestep the fact that they are using other people's work as inspiration because that's the fucking point. Furthermore, most of it is made to be freely shared, much like the original Byron Howard tweet. This is not "for profit", and a lot of AI is very much so. I mean, "bootlegging" is a thing, and that's a hard line to walk, but as long as things don't get too big, fan art is usually seen more as free advertising than stealing, and is in fact encouraged by many outlets (what would Nintendo Power have been without the fan-art section, or Mystery Science Theater 3000 without Cambot zooming in on crudely drawn robots on lined noteboke paper at the end of early Joel episodes, which, yes, is itself a show based on blatantly reusing earlier works. Keep circulating the tapes!).
I guess you could argue, if you were being truly fair, the same ethical issues that lie behind many arguments against generative AI could be applied to fan art, but the difference there is fan art is supposed to be supplementary to or even supportive of what it steals, while generative AI, we are told, is supposed to replace what it has been stealing from. A good parasite doesn't kill the host.