I do not consent to my work or likeness being used to train large language models or generative AI.
There, I said the magic words. Now it’s up to Congress to wake up from their yearly afternoon nap and help the Americans that they claim to love so much.
About a year and a half ago I wrote an article that downplayed how potentially dangerous ChatGPT was. This was incredibly wrong, and I was naive to assume that it wouldn’t improve greatly.
Here’s the problem: programs like Midjourney and GPT scrape the web in order to improve answers and generate more accurate responses. In other words, these large language learning models use people’s work online to better respond to pretty much any prompt you can think of. That’s plagiarism.
You may disagree, but let me propose an idea first. Let’s pass legislation so that people have to opt in order for their work to be used as training data for large language models. How many would opt in? My guess is far fewer than these models have access to today.
In fact, OpenAI has promised to do this exact thing. However, ChatGPT has already faced lawsuits from newspapers that have alleged copyright infringement. In other words, the damage has been done.
Nevertheless, this is still a good move from OpenAI, and one that other generative AI companies need to follow. Midjourney is especially problematic as it directly uses artist’s work to improve the model. None of the artists have had the option to opt out, which should’ve been step one if these companies truly cared about holding to a high moral standard.
The fact of the matter is that many writers, artists, actors, live streamers, youtubers and so much more are uncomfortable with their work being used to train AI, me included. It’s the wild west as far as AI regulations go because Congress has passed zero legislation to effectively deal with this issue. Unfortunately, most of them are a bunch of geriatric idiots that struggle to understand the concept of Wi-Fi.
This is the whole purpose of a government. Many don’t trust OpenAI and other big tech companies to ethically handle the power that large language learning models hold, so they need to be regulated. Simply put, call your congressperson.
As for creative types, don’t be discouraged. The day that humans stop making art is the day we lose our humanity. We can’t let the drive for convenience take away our creativity.
Our pens, brushes and cameras have more power than you may think. Our movies, TV shows and novels are the heartbeat of society, and we will never lose that pulse if people are still creating things. Don’t let these companies discourage you from doing something you love.