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Learnings from paying artists royalties for AI-generated art

kapwing.com

March 10, 2026

9 min read

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56/100

Summary

Tess.Design launched in May 2024 as a marketplace for AI-generated art, offering artists a 50% royalty on the use of their styles. The platform was shut down in January 2026 after less than two years of operation.

Key Takeaways

Tess.Design was launched in May 2024 as a marketplace for AI-generated art, allowing artists to earn a 50% royalty on their styles used by subscribers.
The platform was shut down in January 2026 due to challenges in building a sustainable business model despite offering a properly-licensed image generation service.
Tess established a novel copyright framework that allowed artists to hold rights over derivative works generated in their style, which was not offered by other AI image generators at the time.
The outreach to 325 artists resulted in a 50% response rate, with 6.5% agreeing to join the platform and train models based on their work.

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Hacker News · kapwing.com

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Analysis ready

Community Sentiment

Mixed

Positives

The article provides a refreshing look into the challenges of startup innovation, highlighting the hard work and risks involved in developing new AI applications.
Acknowledging the importance of compensating artists for their styles reflects a growing awareness of intellectual property issues in AI-generated content.

Concerns

The reliance on a base model trained on potentially stolen work raises significant ethical and legal concerns about the legitimacy of the AI's outputs.
Limited artist participation in the platform and poor image generation capabilities compared to established models like OpenAI indicate serious shortcomings in the service's effectiveness.