Since the introduction of AI systems including DALL·E 2, Lensa AI, and Midjourney, artists have argued that such tools steal their work, given that they’ve been fed an endless supply of their pieces as inputs.Over the weekend, Eric Bourdages, the Lead Character Artist on the popular video game Dead by Daylight, urged his followers to create and sell merchandise using the Disney-inspired images he created using Midjourney.In numerous follow-up tweets, Bourdages generated images of other popular characters from movies, video games, and comic books, including Darth Vader, Spider-Man, Batman, Mario, and Pikachu.“People’s craftsmanship, time, effort, and ideas are being taken without their consent and used to create a product that can blend it all together and mimic it to varying degrees.”The Daily Dot reached out to both Bourdages and Midjourney to inquire about the images but did not receive a reply by press time.Just this week, artists on the art-hosting platform ArtStation began uploading identical images en masse that featured the caption “NO TO AI GENERATED IMAGES.”Given just how new the technology is, it remains unclear what guidelines, if any, will be created to balance the rights of artists against the ever-expanding capabilities of AI."