Dutch far-right party pays compensation to court artist after he used AI to change his image

A Dutch court artist has received damages after a lawmaker from the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) used one of her drawings without permission and manipulated it with AI to make the subjects appear more threatening.

Petra Urban, a court artist for 19 years, was shocked to discover that a drawing she made last year depicting two Syrian brothers imprisoned for murdering their sister had been reworked and used by the North Brabant party region in a video on Instagram and Facebook.

“There are three things that upset me,” she said. “Firstly, my work was used without asking my permission. Secondly, this was done for a political party when I want to work as neutrally and independently as possible. And thirdly – and this is what makes it really strange – the distortion was done using AI.”

Under Dutch law, authors are not only protected by…