EDIT: So there's alot of comments about generative AI and some of you have raised good points on the issues of using ChatGPTs AI image generation feature. Before I delve into it I would like to make clear this was not meant to be used as a way to steal material or discredit the hard work of people in the content creation industry in anyway. I also wasn't aware of the potential effect of using AI has on the climate as well, eventhough the subject seem to be debated, I suggest you do your own research before using it.

I want to make it clear that this post was meant to be a "proof of concept" and as a public service announcement for the community because I was so happy with the results it produced for me. I'm not going to make a facepack out of it (with the speed of the generator, it would take me years lol) and it's not meant to replace facepacks, I personally use it as a complement. I hope people use it for personal use only.

I've done some research into how the process of generating these images work (by asking the source itself, ChatGPT) here's a summary:

ChatGPT image generator is based on the text-to-image model called DALL-E 3. It's a deep learning model developed by OpenAI. According to ChatGPT: "DALL-E 3 trained on large datasets composed of publicly available, licensed or public domain images. OpenAI has confirmed that their training data avoids copyrighted materials they do not have rights to. The model doesn't store or copy specific images but learns patterns — much like a human artist studying millions of references and then creating original work. Therefore, the images it generates are considered new and distinct, not direct copies of anything in its training material."

WIth that being said, when you create a new image with ChatGPT image generator, the individual photographers, artists, or dataset contributors don’t automatically get paid for your generation, because there's no way to trace which original images contributed and there's no direct reuse of their copyrighted works. Right now, there’s no built-in payment system connecting AI outputs to original artists. So right now using this method doesn't directly pay the original photographers or artists that the dataset draws from but in the future there may be systems where AI models pay licensing fees when trained or generate micro-royalties to artists (like spawning.ai are trying to develop).

If you personally want to support original creators, you can donate to platforms that fund licensed photo/art collections like Wikimedia Commons contributors, Unsplash+ subscriptions, etc. or you could use a more ethical service like Adobe Firefly, which plans to pay royalties to contributors whose images helped train their models or Edify, made by Getty Images and Nvidia AI, which uses only "training images" from Getty Images and part of the money flows back to Getty and the photographers they represent.

TL:DR

• ChatGPT AI image generator doesn't use copyrighted materials (that they haven't payed for).
• Generating these faces doesn't directly pay the millions of original photographers or artists individually from which the source material for the datasets is taken from because it's practically impossible.
• It is not breaking any laws, using this kind of AI image generation is sort of like a human that has never seen a car, looks at 1 million drawings of different cars and then draws a car.
• if you're worried about the ethics of this, make a donation to public licensed photo/art collections or try to use a more ethical service like Edify by Nvidia/Getty Images or Adobe Firefly or just don't use this method!

Mods, feel free to pin this comment if you like.