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The ethical and legal implications surrounding the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and generative AI tools such as ChatGPT are sure to impact companies, consumers and courtrooms in the coming years. For artists and creators, and those who purchase or license their work, it can be a confusing time to consider how AI will impact who made what and who owns it.
On Thursday, the law firm Davis Wright Tremaine and the nonprofit Washington Lawyers for the Arts co-hosted a panel discussion titled “Artificial Intelligence: The New Muse? AI’s Evolving Legal, Regulatory & Ethical Landscape.”
Panelists included Tiffany Georgievski, an AI, data privacy and IP attorney with Sony AI; Joaquin Hernandez, senior counsel with Pixel United; and Joshua Trujillo, photographer, videographer and storyteller with Starbucks.
The discussion touched on a number of the concerns among creators and those who study and argue the law when it comes to copyright protections, intellectual property, legislative and regulatory action, ethics, misinformation, transparency and more.
Here are some of the highlights from the panelists’ comments, edited for brevity and clarity:
Who owns what?
- Hernandez: “In terms of output and what is being generated by this tool — who owns it? Is someone going to come back to us and say, ‘Hey, this looks really familiar to me.’ Is an artist is going to say, ‘You are infringing on my product?’ Who’s responsible? The maker of the AI model, or is it us who are using it? That’s still sort of unclear at this point.”
- Trujillo: “There are a lot of AI tools out there right now that are actually really propelling creators. I think the space where creators are really nervous is the generative space because that then involves your ability to get paid, your ability to be credited, your ability to make it a career. And that’s what is scary for a lot of people.”
- Georgievski: “Some of the things that I find really interesting are the different approaches that AI providers are taking in their terms of service. Some will say, ‘I don’t own the outputs. Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t, but it’s not me.’ Others will actually say, ‘I own the outputs and you have a license. You may own it if you’re a paid member.’ So the fact that there’s not even a market standard right now in terms of someone using these tools, and the fact that artists may be using these tools to enhance their creativity and end up maybe creating something that they want to protect, and they might not even own the rights, I think is a huge area for artists to think about.”
Panic over new tech
- Trujillo: “Photography is a medium of creation that has always relied on technology — it is technology. And there’s always been a little bit of a panic cycle with each introduction. When autofocus was introduced, there was a little bit of panic. Is this going to replace me? Is everybody going to be able to do this? When digital photography, when Adobe Photoshop, image manipulation — when each thing has come in, there’s been a little bit of a panic cycle. And then eventually people figure out a way to harness that and utilize it to be even more creative. It’s not all doom and gloom out there. But from what I’m hearing there is a lot of fear right now.”
Combatting misinformation:
- Trujillo: “Truth is the hallmark of of journalism, the hallmark of an informed population. All of us as citizens and voters need to be informed. And if we’re being informed from disinformation and misinformation, and malicious actors that are trying to sway opinions, that ultimately affects our democracy. We saw what happened with the elections with memes and Facebook, but this is a whole different monster. We all as informed citizens need to just be hyper aware of that space right now, because it’s very dangerous.”
- Georgievski: “Know your vendors, know what they’re doing, know what their reputation is. How are you identifying or not identifying human works vs. AI-generated works? There are regulatory proposals about transparency obligations in terms of identifying things that are AI generated vs. not. Content authenticity is a big field of research right now in the AI space — can we actually have a way of saying that this came from a specific outlet or photographer, or can we at least identify what is AI generated or not? Those tools aren’t really there right now, but I expect that because it’s a new market, and it’s a big, hot topic that we could see some of those in the future.”
Protecting art and artists
- Trujillo: “There’s always that stereotype of the starving artists, the poor artist. It’s always been really hard to make it as an artist. I’m just hoping for a system or a society or a legal framework or legislation that can act to support creatives in some way. Because I think right now a lot of people in the creative world are feeling just so left behind, and a lot of them feel powerless right now.”
- Hernandez: “In terms of protecting, it depends — are you protecting it from having someone scrape your work into a dataset that is training the AI, versus the output? The output stuff is easy because we already know that whatever AI creates chances are you can’t protect it. But how do you protect it from having an AI company use it as part of its dataset to train its AI model? That’s a little bit more difficult. You can get to the rudimentary issues, like, be careful what you put out there. Or, use a secure platform where it makes data scraping much more difficult.”
- Georgievski: “AI, particularly generative AI models, are not intended to compete with artists, they’re really there to enhance creativity. The problem that we’re going to see is that everyone is suddenly an AI company. And you don’t know who to actually trust. The goal isn’t for AI to suddenly kill the arts. I don’t think anyone wants that. What we’re seeing is just unintended consequences of a new technology that hasn’t been fully worked out. And what’s great is that the emphasis on AI within the open source community is going to quickly advance a lot of safeguards to help, again, not make this something that’s a competitive tool, but make new and cool tools that can actually help elevate humanity in general, including through the arts.”
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