Quick Post On AI Writing and Copyright…
Got Three Letters…
All three explained to me (I did not take then as condescending, but they were…) that I did not understand how the copyright office is having issues on how much human touch needs to be done to make a piece of AI art or writing able to be protected by copyright and thus owned as a property.
Basic rule of copyright… It must be human created.
Is a 10% change enough of an AI output? No. How about an 80% change? Is that enough to have it deemed human created? (We won’t talk about the minimum requirement of originality because that is just mostly moot.) So yes, the copyright offices here and in other major countries are trying to work that ball of ugly out, and it will take more decades in court than I care to think about. Way past my lifetime I am sure.
And even then it will be subjective.
Yup, I study copyright and read copyright office decisions and court cases and so on because I am a copyright junkie (and I make my living with copyright and trademark… duh.)
But as I said yesterday, THAT IS NOT THE PROBLEM….
The discussions and court cases and decisions by the copyright office assume the underlying AI output if valid. Not stolen.
But alas, in fiction writing and graphic arts, just about 100% of any AI program for fiction and maybe up to 80% of all art AI programs use stolen copyright. So mostly at this point, if you are so lazy as to use AI art or a writing program for your fiction, you are using stolen property.
You will not own it. It was not yours to start with. Called theft and you have no right to the copyright of something you have stolen.
So, the bottom line is that no matter how much lipstick you smear on stolen property to try to pretend it is yours, it is still stolen property.
7 Comments
Kristi N.
AI is a tough subject because nobody (not even the developers) understand what it does, and the companies made bad decisions in stealing material to train them. My day job is going all in on AI, and I’m running a side project on my own time to stress test 3 models to determine what their shortcomings and uses might be. And I’ve learned some things.
First off, Kris was right. Aside from the issue of where they got their knowledge, AIs can’t write. If you think they can, then turn off your keyboard and go learn what writing is. And as one writer said, why would we take the most rewarding part of writing (creating content) and give it to somebody else to do?
Can AI development edit? No. (See above. Kris was right) They don’t know what makes a story meaningful to humans. They understand structure, but can’t track the myriad of details that readers absorb subconsciously. Can they copy edit? How many MORE mistakes do you want in your manuscript? Can they summarize? Depends on if you’re okay with your characters being overlooked or conflated with each other at the drop of a hat.
So what are they good for? As one IT person put it, they are an 8th generation Clippy. You can use them for mundane stuff, but eventually you want to reach through the screen and permanently straighten him. Don’t be lazy. Do your own work, learn your own lessons. There are no shortcuts.
dwsmith
Kristi, thank you!! That is perfect.
Kristi N.
I should put in a caveat, though. If you are dealing with a visual or physical challenge, AI is developing well enough that it can help get around obstacles in seeing the words on the screen or typing them in. But the ‘hallucination’ benchmark–where the AI just makes up facts–is still too high to use them for research. And right now, I’m running a literary text through them (again and again) and finding that where humans might find more meaning in an analysis, AIs still miss most of them. Or they cave and will twist the text to say anything you want it to, even if it’s not supported by the words. (Don’t ask about the time I asked for deconstruction and got a syntactical analysis that would have drowned a PhD…)
TimothyH
AI doesn’t create. It copies and pastes bit and pieces from others’ work.
Then, it combines the bits of product in a shaker(memory), sloshes it around(quasi-random generator), and dumps the result onto the page or the screen. Voila! AI content!
James Palmer
AI is just a marketing term. It’s an expert system, not Skynet. Generative AI will never get a flat tire, have its heart broken, eat an amazing rigatoni, play with a litter of kittens, watch it rain, kiss someone, fall in love, or any of the million other things encompassing human experience that becomes the grist writers mill into words.
Jenny K.
Love your stance on this, Dean. I think the swarm of AI “art” and “writing” is making the internet worse and making the humans who use it dumber and less creative.
Sure, it’s “harder” to make your own art and writing (also more fun!!) but anything worth doing is worth putting in effort. I think making art is part of what makes us human. Why people want to give that away to a machine is beyond me.
Sheila
Thank you for saying it. Using “AI” is a cheat, and it’s so pervasive out there, people are told to use it, “create” their own “original” works, make tons of money without learning how to write, edit or anything else.
Most writer’s forums are full of this nonsense. It’s like the low/no content thing people are falling for: it won’t work.
But, whatever. I’ll keep doing my own writing and making my own covers, and I won’t be using the “AI” audio book invitations. I may end up alone in this, that’s okay. I’m old and set in my ways! LOL