{ "title": "We wish you a fashionable year of the rabbit, full of innovation!" , "date": 1674345688 , "content": [ [ "imglarge-hidden", "life-happycny2023-card.png" ] , [ "hr-hidden" ] , [ "p", "For probably as long as greeting messages have been sent, they have come in the form of a message on a card with a picture or illustration on it. This year we wanted something special to celebrate our first second lunar year spent in Hong Kong. Once again, we turned to MidJourney to create a stunning original design." ] , [ "p", "Artificial intelligence "generative design" tools have been criticised in the past few months by many artists, mostly illustrators. Behind the claim that these computer models have been trained using their creations without their approval, they mostly fear that just a few hours or days of training are required for anyone to successfully generate illustrations that mimic a style that took them years to find and refine." ] , [ "p", "Indeed, it took us less than half a day to generate the set of images below. Each of them depicts a couple of newly weds in the year of the rabbit, in a variety of styles: art nouveau, Chinese communist propaganda posters, cyberpunk sci-fi, Japanese mangas, Hong Kong horror movies, K-Pop etc. All we needed to create them was a description of the scene, of the desired style, then to guide the Artificial Intelligence and refine the results." ] , [ "hr" ] , [ "imgro", [ "life-happycny2023-01.png", "life-happycny2023-02.png", "life-happycny2023-03.png", "life-happycny2023-04.png", "life-happycny2023-05.png", "life-happycny2023-06.png", "life-happycny2023-07.png", "life-happycny2023-08.png", "life-happycny2023-09.png" ] ] , [ "hr" ] , [ "p", "Are these copies of existing styles? Of course. Automated or not, design copies have always existed. The bad news: copyright laws offer no protection to artists when it comes to style. The only things that you can protect are unique creations. This is particularly true in the fashion industry, where designs from fashion creators have been copied for decades with full impunity. From high-end creators by mass-market brands. From the street and social media by fast-fashion brands. The only way for a brand or artist to fight counterfeit goods is to incorporate protected details such as a logo or recognisable elements (like adidas' three bands). Or simply to sign their work, a practice mostly forgotten in the Internet age but that would certainly deserve to do a come back. Not to mention some brands organising the creation and distribution of their own counterfeit goods. Better cannibalise your own sales than let someone else do it, right?" ] , [ "p", "On the positive side, generative design tools can be of great help for designers, not only to create visuals. At atelierYVF, we have used them in 2022 for inspiration on a number of topics, including dresses and embroidery. They can quickly generate options and variations on an initial inspiration, and expand your mind and creativity. There is no point in fighting progress and luxury is about breaking barriers. We will definitely keep doing that in the coming year." ] , [ "p", "May 2023 be a leap-rabbit year to us all!" ] , [ "ul-hidden", [ "The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) on AI and Copyright" , "The Madrid System homepage" ] ] ] , "author": "Alex VB" }