Stories pop-up each day of musicians being copyright claimed by bots on YouTube. We hear about artists and writers who have had their artistic style and works appropriated by AI tools. What can be done?
My vision would be that creators move back to the model before the big tech platforms took over the internet. The model that never really got the chance to develop. Each creator needs their own website, their own emailing list, their own supporters and their own policies and protections.
If you own the website you can add a robots.txt file and put a “robots noindex” statement in the header of all your web pages. You can publish explicit Terms of Service that forbid unauthorised scraping or data use. You can also use anti-scraping tools to detect and block bots when they do not comply with the softer measures. It’s not a complete solution but it’s more than you get from the big tech platforms. Your website, your rules.
You can also fully restrict access to your best content to your subscribers, patrons and customers. Proof of creation, using video and witnesses plus posting date verification will be important.
If creators no longer put all their content out for the world to see eventually AI-training bots will be training largely on other AI-generated content and become like the Ouroboros eating its own tail. It will become boring and overused. AI-generated content is already boring and overused in my opinion.
It is my hope that people will again seek out novelty and originality. Creators can then step in and allow certain of their works to be used in training data plus impose their own restrictions on its use. This could then become a source of income for individual creators.
It may make it more difficult for creators in the short-term. Without big tech platforms it would be more difficult for some creators to become well-known but this is how it was before the rise of big tech platforms. It is the reality for many creators ignored by the algorithms in any case. Creators may need to become satisfied with smaller followings gained in a more organic way and let go of the idea of millions of subscribers. It feels better than having your work stolen and the profits go to big tech.
The biggest power creators have is to walk away from big tech platforms and take control of and protect their works. I say this as I publish to Medium. I make no money from my musings and have practically no views. Still I’m aware my creative work could potentially be appropriated for AI-training purposes no matter how good or bad it is. I might at some point take down my articles and re-work them for my own website.
