Xiaomi Stole Artwork Commissioned By LG

Chinese handset maker Xiaomi reportedly stole an artist named Peter Tarka’s work to promote company’s products on its Spanish website.

The images in question were stolen from Tarka’s Behance portfolio without any credit or payment. Moreover, some of the elements used were actually commissioned pieces for Xiaomi’s competitor LG.

“3D artist Peter said that he created it in May 2018 as part of his installations collection, as you can see here on his Behance portfolio. It looks like Xiaomi’s artists barely changed a thing — simply swapping out the ramps and balls for renders of the company’s products,” The Verge reported on Wednesday.

The artist said that no one from Xiaomi ever reached out about licensing or commissioning his art.

The images that were used in the handset maker’s official Spanish webpage but have been removed since.

“I’m 100% sure they’ve used my pieces cause everything matches perfectly, they only changed the saturation and retouched few elements to not make it so obvious,” he was quoted as saying by The Verge.

Xiaomi in a statement to The Verge said it had terminated the employee responsible for using Tarka’s artwork without permission and issued a direct apology to the artist.

This isn’t the first time Xiaomi has been accused of stealing artworks from rivals. The Verge in February reported that Xiaomi had copied MacOS Mojave’s signature sand dunes wallpaper in Mi 9. Xiaomi slightly tweaked the wallpaper to shift colours with the time of day.―Livemint