This is not art.
Sur ton mur showcases the talent and creativity of local artists. In our Hochelaga workshop, we carefully select, print, and ship the artworks of our artists, always guided by our core values. Our love for illustration and for its creators has been at the heart of our work since day one.
This is why, like many in the field, we are watching the rise of generative AI in the world of imagery with great concern. Our position on the matter is extremely simple: since our founding in 2013, we have collaborated exclusively with artists who create their own work, with their imagination, their hands, their sensitivity, and deep respect for the work of their peers.
We believe in the power of the artistic gesture, in human creativity, and in the exceptional quality that emerges from visual research rooted in lived experience, reflection, and emotion.
Sur ton mur is committed to continuing to uphold these values, to speak about them openly, and to support those who choose authenticity and good old human effort.
To our artists: THANK YOU.
You are our soul.
Your imagination, your sensitivity, and your expertise are irreplaceable.
And to everyone who creates authentic art and continues to resist: thank you for holding the line.
When Jean-Paul Eid contacted us to offer the artwork “Ceci n’est pas de l’art”, we said yes, even though spontaneous collaborations are not something we usually do.
We said yes because we want to help amplify his message, and because we want you to be able to carry that message too and support an artist.
This illustration was created to accompany his opinion piece published in Le Devoir.
Here is the text he shared:
When Artificial Intelligence Has Devoured Everything
As an illustrator, I have witnessed profound upheavals over the past forty years. From the rise of stock image banks to the near extinction of newspapers and magazines, and the arrival of the Web, artists have adapted.
But the arrival of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has nothing to do with these previous revolutions. Here, the issue is not the technology itself, but the financial model built on a very human decision made by corporate administrators: to develop their toy using stolen material. We are now witnessing, powerless, the largest intellectual property theft in history, an industrial-scale plundering of the work of millions of artists around the world to train their machine.
A machine created with a single purpose: to replace those very artists with something cheaper.
If this technology is offered at a bargain price, it is because the raw material has been appropriated, violating the foundation of copyright law, the cornerstone of the cultural industry.
For visual artists, entire portfolios have been ingested by this imitation engine. Yet a portfolio is more than a pile of images. It is the distilled expertise of an artist. Stealing a portfolio is akin to cloning a creator’s DNA without their consent, stripping them of the authorship of their work, stealing their style and even their visual identity. Today, through a form of willful blindness, this piracy allows advertising agencies, designers, art directors, cultural institutions, publishers, including some in Quebec exhibiting at the Salon du livre, to generate images based on portfolios stolen from the very artists they once hired.
To add insult to injury, not only are artists being stripped of their work, but they will now be forced to work at derisory rates imposed by these newly self-declared “artists” or “prompters,” whose work is built entirely on the theft of their competitors’ portfolios. Anxiety is spreading among illustrators. Many newcomers, just out of school, are already thinking about changing careers. Faced with such discouraging prospects, one question emerges: what will feed the beast once professional artists have left the field, leaving behind only hobbyists doomed to pass the hat?
GAI is a particularly voracious ogre that must swallow an astronomical amount of data to regurgitate a single square inch of imagery. If in recent years it has scoured the pristine oceans of the internet, it is now feeding on waters contaminated by its own output. A form of technological inbreeding feeding on its own progeny.
When GAI begins generating images drawn from the common denominators of the billions of images it has itself produced, when the work of illustrators on regional nuances, bodily and sexual diversity disappears from the algorithms, replaced by generic, consensus-driven representations, what will remain of our visual heritage? When art is reduced to clichés, when everything tastes the same ladled out of the same great pot, what will be left of our ability to express our identity, our uniqueness, our representation of ourselves to others?
There is one thing AI will never do: reinvent itself. And without new talents to shake things up, without bold voices, without new schools, movements, or visions, we will be condemned to an endless vintage era, a cultural Groundhog Day, in one of the saddest chapters in the history of art.
Will we collectively accept that tech giants siphon off our cultural heritage with complete impunity, only to serve it back to us as a bland spread on the covers of our own books, the posters of our artistic events, and the promotional materials of our cultural institutions? Will we accept that our public funds support museums, festivals, publishers, or producers who have no qualms about replacing the works of local creators with counterfeits generated from portfolios stolen from the very artists they are meant to champion?
If the viability of our cultural industry rests on copyright as its cardinal principle, should we continue supporting organizations that willingly rely on technologies built on the violation of that very principle?
Jean-Paul Eid
—
Copyright Éric Lajeunesse
Jean-Paul Eid made his debut in the satirical magazine Croc, where he played with the codes of comics, as in Le fond du trou (Éditions de la Pastèque), a perforated album that allowed characters to physically pass through the story.
He later published, with playwright Claude Paiement, the science-fiction comic Memoria, the period piece La femme aux cartes postales, and their latest album CRUE. In 2021, Le petit astronaute, a moving work about disability, was released and went on to receive numerous awards. Several adaptations are currently underway.
A lover of Montréal, he lives there and draws it.