As the creative industries confront the explosion of AI across all artistic mediums at once, calls for action are beginning to converge from artists warning the world to take action before it's too late. From fake Drake songs to stylized Instagram profile pictures, art created with sophisticated AI tools is suddenly ubiquitous, as are conversations about how to rein in the technology before it causes irrevocable harm to creative communities.
This week, digital rights organization Fight for the Future partnered with music industry labor group United Musicians and Allied Workers to launch #AIdayofaction, a campaign calling on Congress to prevent corporations from obtaining copyrights on music and other works of art made with artificial intelligence.
The idea is that by preventing industry giants, like major record labels, for example, from protecting the copyrights of music created with the help of AI, those companies will be forced to continue involving humans in the creative process. But those same concerns – and the same potential strategies to counter the AI onslaught – exist across the creative industries.
“It's funny because if you talk to musicians who have these concerns, they say, 'well, the authors have been very quiet.' "To other people about these concerns, they'll say, 'well, musicians and photographers don't seem to care at all,'" said Lia Holland, director of campaigns and communications at Fightforthefuture. "Part of this is also because the different creative fields, when they have to work together in these situations, are a bit isolated."
“Another attempt was to launch this effort with a day of action, to try to illustrate how these are common concerns that are shared across all artistic mediums. And create an organized model… because when artists from different mediums move together they have much more power.”
The campaign takes aim at potential corporate abuse of AI technology, but is realistic about the ways in which musicians and some other creatives could benefit on an individual level from automating parts of their work. The goal is for AI tools to “become ways for humans to make more money, work less, and compete with the corporations that exploit them.”
“It's really interesting from a musical perspective, specifically because…musicians are maybe more familiar with the idea of AI,” Holland said. “Musicians in general are more familiar with things like music production software and AI tools, like MIDI drum loops… so I think there's a certain amount of more progressive learning going on in them, as far as technology and its ability to make your music better.”
When it comes to art and Artificial Intelligence, the conversation is, to say the least, complicated. Musicians are nervous that industry giants will protect AI music copyrights and exclude them from the process. The major record labels are worried about AI models trained in their catalogs and stealing a slice of their considerable pie. Spotify has deleted thousands of songs created by AI on its platform, but also recently launched globally an AI-powered DJ that selects music for listeners while speaking to them in a synthetic voice.
“Training generative AI using the music of our artists raises the question of which side of the story all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: on the side of the artists, fans and human creative expression, or the side of deepfakes, fraud and denying artists the compensation they are entitled to,” Universal Music Group said after a song that used AI to imitate Drake and The Weeknd, two of its artists, went viral.
These same conversations and contradictions play out across the creative industries, but artists themselves don't always have a seat at the table. Independent artists, in particular, are learning that their voices resonate louder when they come together across disciplines to fight what Holland describes as an “extraordinary specter of exploitation” that exploits their work.
in a roundtable organized by the FTC, the agency brought together figures from across the creative industries—from voice acting and sci-fi to screenwriting, music, illustration, and even fashion—to delve into how generative AI is impacting creatives.
“I know that generative AI in particular poses a unique set of opportunities and challenges for the creative industries,” said FTC Chair Lina Khan. "We have already heard significant concerns about how these technologies could, virtually overnight, significantly disempower creators and artists who may see their life's creation taken over by patterns over which they have no control."
Representatives from countless creative communities expressed concerns about opt-out requirements that, by default, train AI models on artists' original work, and how existing copyright law could be a useful, if not comprehensive, tool. to establish regulatory barriers.
In the conversation, a WGA representative emphasized that while the striking writers gained their own protection in a newly reached agreement, the fight for artists' livelihoods “does not end at the negotiating table.”
Whether Congress moves in time to address growing concerns around AI and the creative industries or not, for its part, the FTC appears keenly attuned to the risks of the technology and bringing together voices from all sides. industries.
“Art is fundamentally human,” said FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter.
“Humans can use technology to help create art, but something cannot be art without human input. Technology, by definition, is not human… humans can strive to create generative AI that is increasingly intelligent, but not can and will not replace human creativity.”
