Vraj: Bhoomi, a Mumbai fashion clothing brand, has just alleged that a brand hosted on Myntra has taken its signature designs and plagiarized them using AI without permission. According to the former, the other brand Anouk had simply replaced its models' faces and uploaded shoddy imitations onto the e-commerce clothing site.
While there are many AI tools that can help in such spoofing of original images in minutes, the popular ones, such as Stable Diffusion and DALL-E or similar tools, have been used for such acts.
Artists around the world have similarly strong emotions when highlighting plagiarism by AI, where their art is used to train AI or replicate their work without permission. The recent trend where Studio Ghibli-style images emerged , and were strongly opposed by the creator, Hayao Miyazaki.
Bhoomi Dani, the founder of Vraj:Bhoomi, sharing her thoughts about infringement, said, “When we see people copying our motifs, so conveniently and carelessly, it hurts."
Vraj:Bhoomi took to Facebook to report its findings and shared screenshots of multiple products listed on Myntra that were an exact replica of its fall collection. The post also urged readers to tag Myntra and Anouk in order to highlight "the culture of careless copying."
Myntra has yet to respond to any such inquiry. However, it had previously said that the brand investigates unauthorised content when alerted. No such specifics have been offered regarding this allegation.
Such negligence on the shopping giant's part has rather led to a poor impression. Myntra's massive empire overshadows small brand such as Vraj:Bhoomi with around 30 staff members, and the unethical use of AI could be severly detrimental to the latter's business.
As AI is advancing towards AGI, there will be an unprecedented impact on all the creative fields and industries, be it music, videos, or content, art, images, or even clothing. Only with well-thought-out AI laws and checks in place can we expect fairness for a creator's art and expression.