By Brooklynn Then, age 10
Artificial intelligence is everywhere—some for the better, some for the worse. Some AI has good intentions, like predictive software used in hospitals to diagnose patients, but it can also be more harmful, like the use of deepfakes, which replicate the voice or image of a person to make something that didn’t happen look real or authentic.
Artists are upset about AI because their work is used and stolen without their permission. This can be applicable to not only famous artists, but regular people like you and me.
The Human Artistry Campaign is an organization that was created to help people develop artificial intelligence in ways that support human culture, rather than replacing it. They’re supporting the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act, a bill protecting people from their likenesses being used in unauthorized re-creations.
One of the many artists supporting this bipartisan bill is country singer Martina McBride. “Like all great technologies, [AI] can also be abused, in this case by stealing people’s voices and likenesses to scare and defraud families, impersonate government officials, or make phony recordings posing as artists like me,” McBride told a panel of senators in March, according to AP News.
IndyKids recently spoke to Dr. Moiya McTier, senior adviser at the Human Artistry Campaign, to learn more about the NO FAKES Act and the campaign’s goals.
“Based on how we know artificial intelligence has been developed, we know it could not find these patterns without profiting off of the labor of real human artists. And artists are upset about it,” said Dr. McTier.
Dr. McTier was personally affected by AI. “I know for a fact that OpenAI used my first book in its training set,” she said. “And I did not give permission for that. I worked really hard to make what I knew was a unique book … and they’re not going to give me any credit for it. That really hurts.”
She’s not the only one. According to Time for Kids, Ammaar Reshi made a children’s book called Alice and Sparkle with AI tools. Reshi first had a conversation with ChatGPT about a girl named Alice. Next he used the app Midjourney, an AI tool that generates words into pictures, to illustrate it.
“The main problem to me about AI is that it was trained off of artists’ work,” illustrator Adriane Tsai told Time. “It’s our creations, our distinct styles … that we did not consent to being used.”
In the end, a lot of artists, and even many companies, like the Recording Industry Association of America, the Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), Disney, OpenAI, Google, Sony, and more, want to take down unauthorized replicas and protect people, even if they’re not famous. With deepfakes, students can be bullied, families can be scammed, and everyone can be a target, not just celebrities.
