You know Murphy’s Law. Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Bad news corollary to Murphy’s Law is that Murphy’s Law accelerates in proportion to the number of things you must do.
Here’s the evidence.
November 6: I mail a calendar to a friend in New York.
December 4: I learn that an outfit named LAION-5B, a dataset of more than 5.8 billion images, has stolen a minimum of 10 of my photos, by screenscraping them right off my website. My name is on each of the photos.
December 4: I order two prints from a printing outfit I’ve worked with for 20 years. I talk with a representative who assures me that the prints will be delivered no later than December 12 to a friend of mine who has agreed to receive them for me and take them to the photo exhibit where they will be displayed, as part of a Christmas season event. The prints are to be delivered and hung at the show site on Wednesday, December 13. I tell my friend when to expect the prints. I mail him the labels for the two photos, giving medium, price, and edition.
I find a law firm that has filed a class action against the outfits that used LAION-5B to create AI (artificial intelligence)-generated images. I write to the law firm. I get no reply.
