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| | | Introduction | |
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< | It's December 2023, and the deluge of advertisers (Apple, Sony, IMB, Paramount, Disney) bailing on X/Twitter continues. The activity is purportedly based on reports that Elon Musk, the now-owner of the social media monolith X, had boosted rhetoric supporting antisemitic conspiracy theories. Of course major consumer-facing brands wouldn't want advertisements shown next to such content, but Elon didn't take this in stride. Instead, he is threatening to sue some of the groups that originally pointed out the dangerous rhetoric on his site. He isn't hiding behind lawyers and tweets in expressing his contempt for what he seems to think are "disloyal" companies, but he is getting in front of camera to do so. In an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, the topic of AI came up in a conversation about X/Twitter's content moderation in light of the advertising controversy. X/Twitter not only been using AI technology to shape the featuring of particular content, but Musk has started has started feeding tweets to his own AI program to "train it." Notably, in response to a question about the implications of copyright law and AI learning, Musk responded that "by the time these [copyright] lawsuits are decided, we'll have Digital God." Absurd diction aside, it's worth thinking about the nexus between the increasingly capable technology with the limited legal protections we have for artists. If AI will become "Digital God," are creators merely meant to bow down to this new, thieving creator? | >
> | In a December 2023 interview between Elon Musk and Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times, the topic of AI came up in a conversation about X/Twitter's content moderation in light of the recent advertising controversy (major advertisers have pulled out after the platform’s algorithm allegedly began boosting antisemitic conspiracy theories). X/Twitter has not only been using AI technology to shape the featuring of particular content, but Musk has started feeding tweets to his own AI program to "train it." Notably, in response to a question about the implications of copyright law and AI learning, Musk responded that "by the time these [copyright] lawsuits are decided, we'll have Digital God." Absurd diction aside, it's worth thinking about the nexus between the increasingly capable technology and the interest in developing it with the legal protections and principles of copyright law. If AI will become "Digital God," is copyright meant to bow down to this new, thieving creator? This question seems easier to answer as related to properly licensed software/other works than it does artistic materials, like theatrical set design, that don’t fit neatly into the bounds of copyright protection. | | | | |
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< | Current Case Study: AI Set Designs | >
> | Wikipedia as a Training Ground | | | | |
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< | Legal and ethical questions surrounding copyright liability for users of AI to "create" in the artistic space have already emerged in a handful of contexts, but I think it would be useful to talk about one in particular due to its association with the purest form of creativity: the theater. Set designers have an important job, and as producers seek to cut costs more and more, designers are pressured (and probably required in some spaces) to create a less physical and therefore burdensome set and, instead, use digital screens for seamless and cost-effective scene transitions. Such "AI Set Design" began floating around on social media about a year ago, and many are excited about the visual outputs already created. Some set designers are, perhaps surprisingly, actively encouraging using AI in their designs; they are so certain that their jobs will not be replaced and that AI really is just "computer assisted drawing" that will prove more helpful than harmful. But what about the source material for these AI interfaces? They aren't just able to compete with the Tony Award-winning set designers out there without reason, and that reason is that they are learning from the IP of preexisting designers. When asked about OpenAI? 's claims that their AI is not using copyrighted information to learn, Musk brusquely responded that "that's a lie." And unlike with human copyright infringement claims, an algorithm cannot (or should not be able to) claim that a work, though inspired by another's, is independently created to skirt liability. But is it really that different from a human artist? In catching myself thinking thoughtlessly, I wonder if AI learning from peer artists is really just what other, human, artists do, but far more efficiently. Are we ok with this efficiency? Ethically, it seems to cut against the rallying cries of human collaboration and creativity that come from the theater, but, as conversations about the set design of the currently touring production of The Wiz shows, there is still tremendous shame in its designers' admitting to AI use for what seems to be the bulk of the set's visuals. | >
> | Wikipedia is licensed under Creative Commons and is thus available for commercial usage, meaning that users are relatively free to share and edit the text so long as it is attributed correctly. But how does this work with AI training? It seems that AI could freely use the information to educate itself, but in folding that knowledge into the commercial product that AI will increasingly become, it is not clear how companies can properly attribute Wikipedia’s contributions when the information is integrated into the Digital God’s mind without clear delineation? If it wanted to, Wikipedia could absolutely change their license and prohibit AI usage, but this seems counter to their open-source mission. Some people worry, furthermore, that such free training would “allow[] companies like OpenAI? to exploit the open web to create closed commercial datasets for their models.” This concern is less about copyright than it is the integrity of such knowledge, driven by the fear that AI interpretation upon AI interpretation will warp the information displayed on sites like Wikipedia. | | | | |
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< | Ramifications for Creatives on X/Twitter | >
> | In general, if we want to train AI to be a responsible source of knowledge, allowing free access to open-source sites like Wikipedia seems like a smart move. Monetizing Wikipedia isn’t the goal, but safeguards may be necessary for companies who work on a for-profit model, such as explicit restrictions and software that monitors and curbs AI behavior.
Current Case Study: AI Set Designs
A larger problem with AI and copyright can be found in the context of theatrical set design. Set designers have an important job, and as producers seek to cut costs more and more, designers are pressured (and probably required in some spaces) to create a less physical and therefore burdensome set and, instead, use digital screens for seamless and cost-effective scene transitions. Such "AI Set Design" began floating around on social media about a year ago, and many are excited about the visual outputs already created. Protecting set designs from widespread distribution was previously not a major concern, since theater is rarely, if ever, available on the internet. However, with the pandemic and the increase in the availability of theater “pro-shots,” a variety of works (such as “Hamilton” on Disney+) now circulate on the internet and are thus ripe for illegal copying and re-posting. | | | | |
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< | Opening up these questions to Musk's new AI baby is necessary for those who consider the above AI use for set design plagiaristic. The problem in talking more specifically about using a platform like X/Twitter as creative fodder for AI is that it necessitates talking about many different kinds of copyright concerns. Not only do we have the same initial (ethical? legal?) concern about AI directly basing its designs off of preexisting work without the creative spark we have been told is innately human, but there is also the difficulty of copyright protections generally on the social media website. X/Twitter is, at its most viral, a collaborative space where users build off of one another to make a point or a joke, for instance. In the situation where someone is retweeting (who knows what this verb is now after the X rebrand) another's post, the "creative content" in question is both the retweeter and the original tweeter. If we were to even think about integrating a tracking component into AI that could potentially credit or be transparent about whose work it is using in making a specific creative output, the difficulty in the social media space is even figuring out, in the first instance, who deserves the credit in the legal, and ethical sense. | >
> | Unlike properly-licensed software, set designs are (1) rarely protected by copyright and (2) are more difficult contexts to monitor AI theft, even with explicit licensing restrictions. If AI is inspired by a design, how is that any different from a human artist being inspired by a work? If we could determine exact copying, we might be able to police this, but it is hard to say that ever-developing AI software could not quickly get around this. | | | | |
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Better focus would help, I think, most. The introduction is long, and by the time we have followed the essentially personal view it takes of the subject, we discover that isn't the subject at all. | >
> | Concern of copyright in this space, however, may be unfounded. Some set designers are actively encouraging using AI in their designs; they are so certain that their jobs will not be replaced and that AI really is just "computer assisted drawing" that will prove more helpful than harmful. But what about the source material for these AI interfaces? They aren't just able to compete with the Tony Award-winning set designers out there without reason, and that reason is that they are learning from the IP of preexisting designers. When asked about OpenAI? 's claims that their AI is not using copyrighted information to learn, Musk brusquely responded that "that's a lie." And unlike with human copyright infringement claims, an algorithm cannot (or should not be able to) claim that a work, though inspired by another's, is independently created to skirt liability. | | | | |
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< | If copyright problems are the problems, what are they? Making not copyrightable because not original works of authorship (with "creative spark," like a new product, I guess) out of copyrighted material still requires permission, mostly (a concordance, for example). So the question I think you are trying to ask would be neatly posed if, for example, copyrighted works whose license terms prohibited training or set conditions on what could be done with models trained on licensed works were used contrary to explicit terms. | | | | |
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< | That would be Wikipedia, wouldn't it? Licensed under Creative Commons BY-Share Alike, the successor to Wikipedia's original GNU Free Document License, which Richard Stallman and I wrote at his mother's kitchen table. So the issue does look set to arise...
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> | Ramifications for Creatives on X/Twitter | | | | |
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> | Opening up these questions to Musk's new AI baby is necessary for those who consider the above AI use for set design plagiaristic. The problem in talking more specifically about using a platform like X/Twitter as creative fodder for AI is that it necessitates talking about many different kinds of copyright concerns. Not only do we have the same initial (ethical? legal?) concern about AI directly basing its designs off of preexisting work without the creative spark we have been told is innately human, but there is also the difficulty of copyright protections generally on the social media website. Even though you “retain the rights to anything you post,” if the artist is not the one who posts, then their work is not protected. Unlike Wikipedia, set designers may eventually start caring about copyright infringement. However, it may not be necessary to involve the law: can preexisting social norms be enough? | | |
You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |
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