Radiohead’s Thom Yorke in the war against artificial intelligence

Prominent actors, writers, musicians and writers are among the 11,500 artists who have signed a statement calling for an end to the unlicensed use of creative works to teach generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT OpenAI, calling it a “threat” to creators’ livelihoods.

The open letter, consisting of just 29 words, states: “The unlicensed use of creative works to teach generative AI poses a significant and unfair threat to the livelihoods of the people behind these works and should not be allowed.”

Signatories include Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, award-winning actors Julianne Moore and Kevin Bacon, Nobel Prize-winning writer Kazuo Ishiguro, and ABBA composer and performer Bjorn Ulvaeus.

OpenAI and other technology companies creating generative AI products use data obtained from the Internet to train their AI models. Depending on the nature of the generative AI tool being trained, the data may include text, images, video, music, and voice.

The data helps create and improve algorithms for tools that allow users to conduct human dialogue in text or spoken form or create images and/or videos from text prompts. You can also use voice instruments and even create music from scratch using a few basic user input instructions.

The main problem is that the data is often extracted without the consent of the artists and without the tech companies providing any compensation or credit.

Creators of generative artificial intelligence tools say data collection methods are protected by copyright law on the basis of “fair use,” but a growing number of artists are speaking out against the practice, claiming copyright infringement.

Last year, a number of lawsuits related to the issue reached US courts, forcing companies like OpenAI to defend themselves against copyright infringement claims.

In an attempt to offset new lawsuits, a growing number of companies are creating generative artificial intelligence tools have begun entering into licensing agreements with media publishers that provide technology companies with access to educational content in exchange for some form of compensation package.

Since generative AI is still a relatively new form of technology, regulators still have some catching up to do, so it will likely be some time before the problem is fully resolved.