Artist or AI?

To start, what is generative AI?

If you've been on social media lately, you may have noticed the latest trend of people sharing their AI-generated selfies. Uploaded photos combine with art techniques and styles from famous works of art to generate new images in seconds. This is one form of Generative AI.

According to Harvard Business Review, generative AI is a coded model that "can take in such content as images, longer text formats, emails, social media content, voice recordings, program code, and structured data. They can output new content, translations, answers to questions, sentiment analysis, summaries, and even videos."

For this reason, among others, major tech companies and shiny new startups are gearing up to compete in the generative AI arena, a fast-growing segment with all the makings of a Wild West tech space, where code is written faster than laws can keep up.

The question then becomes, who is the creator? Is it the coder who creates the model, the AI itself, or the artist whose original work was used to create new content? For artists and designers who've poured years into developing their artistic practice, these generative AI models are ripping off years of their experience in seconds. Copyright means little when generative AI uses art to learn and create its own iterations.

While lawsuits get filed and acquisitions become commonplace, we're looking at the Top 3 Generative AI companies based on revenue:

No. 1 Github was acquired by the tech giant Microsoft in 2018. No. 2 Jasper reached unicorn status earlier this year in their $125MM Round A. No. 3 Writer is an AI-based writing assistant worth $80MM after two years in business.

Honorable mention: OpenAI gets a mention for its contributions to the discussion. Founded by a group of tech All-Stars, including Elon Musk, this company is an interesting case study in the legalities of generative AI. Read more about its connection to Twitter here.

To see all the top companies in generative AI, use our saved search.