Commitment to Empowering Human Artists (CEHA.md)

What is this?

This document, the "Commitment to Empowering Human Artists" (CEHA), is a non-binding ideological statement of intent directed towards our users and the art community at large, conveying the Krita project's commitment to working towards goals which are meant to empower human artists to the best of our ability.

The CEHA has been written in plain and clear language, and outlines a few simple commitments that we should make to unambiguously point this project in a direction in which we continue to work in the best interest our users, and in the interest of a healthy culture of human artists at large.

What isn't this?

To be clear, the CEHA is not:

• Any sort of additional software license, nor does it conflict with our existing licenses.
• Any sort of "Contributor License Agreement" (CLA), nor does it affect the copyright of submissions.
• Any sort of legal or legally binding agreement.
• A full project mission statement (though maybe it could be considered a part of one).
• A mandatory, static or immutable document.

Why is any of this necessary?

In my opinion, today's creatives are under attack by a scheme of mass exploitation on an industrial scale in the form of an multi-billion dollar "AI" industry which refuses to acknowledge the difference between work which is publicly visible and work which is public domain. Specifically, it is no secret that big tech and others seeking to benefit from the "AI" bubble/goldrush have developed a business model which relies on the widespread scraping of an unknowable number of unlicensed copyrighted works for use as input "training data" to their algorithm.

This behavior is not an inherent feature or fundamental requirement of "AI" (a.k.a. "machine learning") technology, but yet another conscious and cynical decision by business people to "move fast and break things" in the name of attracting capital investment, without concern for ethics or social/cultural impact. In my view that is wrong--just as wrong as if someone were to make use of our project's source code in a way that violates its license--and I feel that it is not only harmful to working artists (see the various strikes and layoffs over the last year) but also damaging to the culture of human art. Do they care? (I don't think so. I think they'd much rather seek forgiveness than seek permission.)

I believe there are many artists today who feel hopeless as some of the biggest companies in the world are now using their own artwork against them, without license, consent or even basic attribution.

So, in light of the short discussion around the potential use of "AI" in Krita during this week's meeting, I'm submitting this CEHA as a short set of ethical guidelines for the future development of Krita and as a clear commitment to our community of artists, as well as every digital or traditional artist out there, that we will continue to act in their best interest first, as advocates for art.

Not long ago I think that Krita's existing labels as a "free", "open source", "community-driven" and "non-profit" might have been more than enough to imply to artists that we are on their side; it basically went without saying. But the rise of an "AI" industry in which some code may be "free and open" while relying heavily on opaque, often legally-dubious and, in my view, unethically sourced training data has muddied the waters around these terms. Something more has to be said, standards need to be raised.

To end on a positive note...

Krita is in a unique position to plant our banner in the ground and stand up for human artists in a way that I believe our for-profit, corporate rivals can't and won't. To my knowledge, this will be the first commitment of this kind that any creative tool has ever made. We don't have shareholders or growth expectations to worry about, and so we can focus on doing what we do best: being a tool, an ally and an advocate for every human artist.

I hope that we can reach consensus on adopting this Commitment to Empowering Human Artists, just like we adopted our GPLv3 free software license and our developer Code of Conduct. Let's wear these simple values as a badge of honor which set us apart.

(Questions, critiques and suggestions are welcome to all developers, artists and other members of the Krita community.)