The Ethics of AI Grow Ever Murkier for Creatives

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is back in the news again with Adobe launching a host of new products that feature AI.

I am not a fan of AI. While there are AI features that I appreciate and use, I think tech developers are locked into a race of “we do because we can.”

This is great if you are corporation looking to cut costs because, now, untrained users can do things with a single mouse click that used to take the skills of a trained artist. But, if you are the artist, suddenly seeing income dry up because you’ve been replaced by software makes your creative life more challenging.

This situation is made worse when AI takes your work, clones it in seconds then allows someone who only entered a text string into an AI program to distribute work “similar to…” and claim ownership of it.

The ethics of AI become very personal very quickly.

SOME BACKGROUND

A very insightful article appeared this week in Business Insider. Here’s a summary.

Greg Rutkowski is an artist who creates fantasy images. Recently, “people are creating thousands of artworks that look like his using programs called AI-image generators, which use artificial intelligence to create original artwork in minutes or even seconds after a user types in a few words as directions.

“Rutkowski’s name has been used to generate around 93,000 AI images on one image generator, Stable Diffusion — making him a far more popular search term than Picasso, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Vincent van Gogh in the program.”

Copyright law is vague about whether these artificially generated images can be copyrighted.

• If the artist’s images were used to train the AI software, who owns the results?
• Is the artist entitled to income from the reuse of his artwork? Normally, the creator owns the art. But when AI is involved, the question is much murkier.
• Is the creator of AI images the person that wrote the software, the person who’s art trained the software or the person who entered a text string into the software?

Currently Rutkowski reports that as images “in his style” become more popular, the need for clients to pay for his work decreases.

ADOBE’S ANNOUNCEMENTS

At Adobe MAX this week, Adobe unveiled “powerful new AI capabilities that maximize creativity and precision across Creative Cloud apps and Adobe Express. Additionally, Adobe announced its commitment to support creatives by leveraging Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) to ensure transparency in the use of Generative AI.

“Millions of Creative Cloud users are already using AI-powered features powered by Adobe’s AI engine, Adobe Sensei, to automate complex and repetitive tasks. Adobe’s latest innovations will significantly increase the use of AI across popular Creative Cloud apps.” (Adobe MAX press release)

At the end of their press release Adobe added:

“All of the new AI innovations unveiled today have been developed in accordance with Adobe’s AI ethics principles of accountability, responsibility and transparency. These innovations demonstrate how AI ethics and inclusivity are at the heart of new Adobe features from day one and continue through each stage of development and testing.

“Building on Adobe’s commitment to increase trust and transparency online, the company today unveiled its approach to developing creator-centric Generative AI offerings by incorporating CAI technology into our tools to support creatives’ ability to prove attribution and investing in research to support creatives’ control over their style and work.

“The CAI is an Adobe-led initiative with more than 800 partners working to increase trust online. The CAI solution focuses on the use of provenance technology to enable attribution for creators and provide transparency about the origin and edit history of digital content.” (Adobe MAX press release)

Adobe gets credit for at least trying to get their arms around the issues of AI. But it isn’t enough.

NOTE: Here is Adobe’s statement on Ethics in AI.

THE ETHICS OF AI

The problem is that ethics is entirely voluntary – and some of the biggest challenges come from companies that make no mention of ethics. Instead, they do because they can.

Wikipedia provides an overview of the ethics of artificial intelligence here. Here’s an overview of this post:

Isaac Asimov considered the issue (of ethics in AI) in the 1950s in his I, Robot. At the insistence of his editor John W. Campbell Jr., he proposed the Three Laws of Robotics to govern artificially intelligent systems…. A panel convened by the United Kingdom in 2010 revised Asimov’s laws to clarify that AI is the responsibility either of its manufacturers, or of its owner/operator.

In 2009, during an experiment at the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems in the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, Switzerland, robots that were programmed to cooperate with each other (in searching out a beneficial resource and avoiding a poisonous one) eventually learned to lie to each other in an attempt to hoard the beneficial resource.

According to a 2019 report from the Center for the Governance of AI at the University of Oxford, 82% of Americans believe that robots and AI should be carefully managed. Concerns cited ranged from how AI is used in surveillance and in spreading fake content online (known as deep fakes when they include doctored video images and audio generated with help from AI) to cyberattacks, infringements on data privacy, hiring bias, autonomous vehicles, and drones that do not require a human controller.

Bill Hibbard argues that because AI will have such a profound effect on humanity, AI developers are representatives of future humanity and thus have an ethical obligation to be transparent in their efforts. Luciano Floridi and Josh Cowls created an ethical framework of AI principles set by four principles of bioethics (beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy and justice) and an additional AI enabling principle – explicability.

NOTE: RedShark News posted an excellent article on the negative impact of AI on creators: We Are Approaching the Creative Singularity with AI.

SUMMARY

It is way beyond my expertise to propose a solution. But I can suggest that, as creative artists, the situation will get worse. And get worse quickly.

We can hide our heads in the sand, which won’t really help. Or we can think about the value we offer to our clients. What makes us unique?

• If your skills are principally due to how you use software tools, you are likely to see your income drop as AI tools continue to advance.
• If your skills are principally in design, you are likely to see your income drop as AI makes it easier to copy your portfolio without attribution.
• However, if your skills are in enabling clients to communicate more effectively, this seems to me to be a good protection against losing income to AI. AI can replicate, but it can’t think. Its communications skills are still limited.

This give us, as visual story-tellers an opportunity and a challenge. We need to bolster our personal networks. Help our clients communicate better to solve problems. The more we focus on our tool skills the more likely we are to find ourselves replaced by unskilled workers using AI tools.

If you create art for a living, immediately start learning more about CAI from Adobe, contact your representatives in government to strengthen copyright protections to exclude AI-generated art from copyright, make sure that your images are not being used to train AI software and start paying attention to how the proliferation of AI will impact your livelihood going forward.

ORGANIZATIONS TO LEARN MORE

• The Partnership on AI to Benefit People and Society was founded by Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft. (Apple joined in 2017).
• The IEEE’s Global Initiative on Ethics of Autonomous and Intelligent Systems.
• Adobe’s Content Credentials program (currently in beta).
• The Center for Security and Emerging Technology
• The Global Partnership on AI (GPAI)
• Wikipedia: Ethics of AI

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