They've come for your content, Chuck.
In my weird little brain, I heard Beetlejuice saying "They've come for your daughter, Chuck" and to be honest, the snake version of Beetlejuice is how I imagine the face of AI (Artificial Intelligence) these days. Make of that what you will.
I have to admit that I am gobsmacked at the sheer audacity of these companies blatantly saying that they are going to use, or essentially steal, our work and we have no say so about it. Multiple lawsuits have already been filed against various companies by creatives who do not want their work stolen and fed into the AI machine to learn from. As far as I can tell, most creatives were never contacted, asked, or notified that their work was being used, therefore no compensation has been given. And that is, to put it simply, both unethical and illegal.
A while back Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, stated that anything uploaded to any of their sites would be used to train their AI. This has caused a backlash, rightfully so from where I'm standing, from creatives of all walks. We don't upload our work for it to be stolen, though we know there's always some risk of that. But for these companies to be so brazen about it is a completely different ball of wax. Meta making that choice is part of the reason that I decided to stop posting my art there recently. But this week, I guess it was Adobe's turn to stick their foot in their mouth and upset the creative community.
As of writing this post, it seems that Adobe may be walking back parts of their new Terms of Service where they stated that they would have full access to any content uploaded to the cloud service in their Creative Cloud software suite with no way to opt-out. However, it is unclear at this time exactly how much they are walking back. Or, if they are going to be true to their word. This is very concerning as Adobe is one of the leading software companies that a lot of creatives use to create their work. Whether it's art, photography, music, animation, or videos. This is so very disheartening that Adobe would choose to say that they have rights to any of your content that is uploaded into their cloud, a cloud service that we pay a subscription fee to as customers. The subscription service is a whole other issue as well, but I digress.
I don't understand why over the last few years it has become acceptable for these companies to feel that they can "own" or "rip off" the work that creatives make and upload. Art, regardless of the medium, has always been devalued to some degree. I've heard the term "starving artist" more times than I can count over the years. While that may have been true in the past depending on the type of artistic career, there are many more opportunities these days for artists to make a living. A lot of artists work in fields that include NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and they aren't allowed to talk or share anything about their work until it's released to the public. The choice of Adobe to say that they can use any content in your cloud for their own AI use is a blatant violation of NDAs and other contractual work similar. This could potentially open them up to liability lawsuits from major companies and studios. From my perspective, this wasn't a smart move for Adobe at all... did no one think to check with legal before going ahead with this change? Honestly.
These companies creating the AI, or at least utilizing it, don't seem to understand that people don't like to be exploited. And that's exactly what they are doing. One could make a thousand arguments about how the human race exploits itself a hundred times over every day, and I agree. I can't and won't argue with that point at all. I guess I'm just looking at the way things are going and wondering why isn't anyone saying no to some of these things. Are they being ignored when they speak up, paid to look the other way, or do they genuinely not see the issue? This world is hard enough to navigate on the best of days, and this is just one more obstacle that we have to deal with now.
It would be great if we had a portion of our government (US) that understood copyright law, as well as the internet in general, and how it all works so that we could get some kind of legislation to stop this stuff from happening. Perhaps this is all part of the growing pains of living in a digital world where so much of our lives is spent online. I'm not sure at this point of where to go from here. It didn't have to be this way though, but someone, somewhere, decided that it should. So now, here we all are, collectively, having to deal with this. I'm so very tired.
Anyhow, if you've read this far, thank you very much for your time, and please feel free to comment below with your thoughts on how AI is already affecting the creative community, and what you think could or should be done in the future. Thanks!
LLAP & MTFBWY
-Jenn
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