T Bone Burnett op-ed in WaPo on protecting human artistry in the AI era
It was cowritten by Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab. Burnett of course is an award-winning producer, guitarist and songwriter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/14/artificial-intelligence-threatens-creative-artists/
Big Tech companies are “training” generative AI models by stealing music, books, photographs, paintings and videos off the internet under the guise of copyright “fair use.”
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Only the biggest of Big Tech players will dominate generative AI, because it requires massive amounts of computing power. But copyright appears to be anything but a top priority for Google, Meta and Microsoft. So while human creators rationally explore and debate this issue, tech corporations are using their work to train the generative machines that ultimately may make the artists obsolete.
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Yet a nation’s cultural life is not a minor matter, and preserving artists’ rights is essential to ensuring their continued contribution. Any reasonable interpretation of existing copyright law ought to protect against abuses, but that doesn’t always happen. A case now before the Supreme Court involving the artist Andy Warhol’s unauthorized use of a photographer’s image of the musician Prince could dictate the direction copyright law will take in the coming years.
But another solution may be needed: new laws and regulations governing AI and safeguarding the human core of creative artistry.
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As for copyright not being a top priority for Big Tech... Just yesterday I posted a news story about Microsoft laying off an AI ethics and society team that had recommended last year that Microsoft's Bing Image Creator, which hasn't been widely released yet, should BLOCK the names of living artists from being used in prompts telling the AI what sort of image to produce.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217724891
Their recommendation was ignored. And now that team has been laid off.
To be blunt: Plagiarism and theft of intellectual property are among the main purposes of AI like ChatGPT and DALL-E.
It's a feature, not a bug.
AI is being marketed as instant creativity to people who might have enough talent to express their own creativity IF they'd put the time and effort into it, but who would rather have AI produce something for them in almost no time, and with almost no effort on their part. Whether that's a story in the style of Stephen King, fantasy art mimicking Greg Rutkowski - see https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/09/16/1059598/this-artist-is-dominating-ai-generated-art-and-hes-not-happy-about-it/ - or music copying an artist's style and even his voice (see https://www.democraticunderground.com/103493633 and https://www.democraticunderground.com/103493882 ).
The people offering this AI aren't naive. They know exactly how tempting this is as bait. And they're hoping people hooked on becoming instantly "creative" by using this AI will become outspoken allies of the AI manufacturers in all the legal and regulatory battles ahead.
I understand the temptation. I was looking at some Midjourney AI creations on Twitter the other night, and caught myself wondering for a moment what it would be like to play with. There are some things I can do really well, but drawing and painting have never been among them, though I've bought art supplies occasionally over the years and sometimes envied relatives and friends who could make money from their art.
But I decided not to try Midjourney because even if I avoided the most obvious plagiarism and didn't include an artist's name in a prompt, it would still be theft, not creativity. It might copy some artist closely enough for the copy to be easily recognizable, but I don't know enough art to be likely to catch it. Even if it looked superficially original, it's just patching together pieces of stolen work.
It might offer the exact same AI creation to any number of other people around the world, and I wouldn't be able to find that out, either.
And because of the way generative AI works, I would not be able to recreate it because giving the exact same prompt could produce something quite different the next time.
It would not be mine in any way.
Even though these AI companies are dishonestly telling users that they can copyright "their creations" - which so far, thankfully, the Supreme Court has disagreed with.
But the companies marketing illusory creativity via AI are hoping to change that.
And they don't give a damn about any of the people whose work and creativity they've ripped off.
I wish the people who are tempted to be "creative" with AI would give some thought to how meaningless their AI creations are, and how much harm they're enabling.
And if they have any real appreciation of art, they should be doing everything they can to protect artists. A community they could join by their own efforts, real efforts, if they want to be real artists. The world can always use more.
We do not need fake art produced by AI exploiting humanity.
= new reply since forum marked as read
We are chugging along down here...waiting to see when the next trip to B'ham is.
makes a ton of money for some corporation, nothing will be done.
Just like if a band plays "With or Without You" at some college bar, U2 probably probably isn't getting their fair share of the beers the band was payed ... sent over to Dublin. But if, I dunno, Coldplay puts out a major-label record that sells 1M copies with a cover of With Or Without You, U2 are probably coming calling for their cut.
For myself, I'll start worrying about this when AI-plagiarized stuff is making somebody some actual money. Kinda like the artists themselves do when the plagiarizers are ... other people 
the owner was playing actual, original songs from artists, the recorded versions. And a lot easier to prove they knew they were violating copyrights when they did so.
It becomes a LOT murkier when it's live versions of songs by artists you let play in your club. Are they supposed to review every set list, and order the artists to strictly adhere to what they said they were going to play? What if they play the song, but with different lyrics, but it's the same chord progression and is 'reminiscent of', but not the same? What if they turn song lyrics into a rap? What if they sing the words to "The Sound of Silence" over a heavy metal chord progression of chords different from the original? That kinda stuff is not worth the legal hassle. Things get too hazy.
As you said, you don't know about actual enforcement. My bet is ... whoever is doing it that enforcement is only worried about copyrighted recordings being played without a license, they generally don't give a shit about covers played by bands in the establishments.
Again, my bet
in a slam-poetry style with no musical accompanying. My performance was unadvertised. It was the middle of the afternoon when the bar was always open. For nothing. Now, was it 'mine'? Arguably, I came up with the 'style' even if it's not my words.
Like you say, you don't know about enforcement, and neither do it. I bet nobody is going after the bar owner for my performance, even if an ASCAP/BMI agent was there that day.
If the bar owner plays With or Without You off the CD they bought in 1988 on the Bar PA system, then it's obvious.
Not sure why we're talking past one another here. I would bet ACTUAL enforcement ... is limited to the latter-type scenario.
If you know different, feel free to share your experience/knowledge ... I'm just guessing as I've said, and I always like to learn 
