Seite 2: Problems in exploiting copyrights are increasing

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These problems that generative AI systems pose for copyright exploiters are likely to intensify soon. In January 2023 alone, a dozen new technologies for generative music were unveiled, exemplified here by Google's MusicLM – AI systems for endless musical tapestries "in the style of" are within reach. Recently, a song on the video platform TikTok was heard millions of times, in which synthetic and, of course, unauthorized AI versions of rappers Drake and The Weeknd performed a new song, and a new album by the Deepfake version of Oasis produces a more authentic Oasis sound than the original band's recent records.

Singer Grimes released her voice for use in AI synthesizers a few days ago and is asking for 50 percent royalties in return if the songs are successful, while CEO Tom Graham of the startup Metaphysics, which specializes in Deepfakes, has applied for a copyright on the AI look of his appearance. A finger pointing to a future of copyright where artists will share in the products for which they contribute data from personality patterns, i.e., data such as voice color, brush stroke, word choice, and so on.

AI models for video and 3D in the coming decades will enable the creation of Latent Spaces, which are akin to a movie that can be explored in real time, where prompt engineering gives you approximate control over the work, from lead actor to costuming (as reported, for example, by the Northern Irish artist and programmer Glenn Marshall in an interview about his film "The Crow").

Mutating matrix, unregulable in the long run

The matrix mutates from a fixed, unique, identifiable work to a stochastically explorable space in which one can fly with Neo through a mash-up of "Metropolis" and "The Neverending Story" on the lucky dragon Falkor: novel amusement parks as DLC (Downloadable Content) for the gaming system Latent Space with infinite music streams performed by virtual musicians.

Already the first collisions of law with the principles of digitality concerned mainly the rights of privacy and authorship. AI syntheses from stochastic libraries are only the latest, admittedly: gigantic progress of this development. The dissolution of human cultural work in a digitally computed, multidimensional latent space means another, almost insurmountable task for legislation.

If one follows the old principles of clearly identifiable works by natural persons, the cultural space will become unregulable eventually. A further extension of copyright law, however - to stylistic features as in trademark law, for example - runs the risk of limiting the creative expression of human beings.

Outlook: Shutterstock's monetization approach

In the present, the monetization approach presented by Shutterstock shows a viable path to the future: artists and photographers are remunerated for their contribution to a training dataset with micro amounts per synthesized image. Whether this form of monetization can compensate for the loss of income from creative work and royalties remains more than questionable - after all, the value of creative work has already been put under enormous pressure by the emergence of globalized design platforms. Also, conceivable are regular payments equivalent to the GEMA copying levies on CD burners or copying devices – or, meanwhile, smartphones, which have already been in use for decades.

Whether its distribution procedures based on pro rata contributions to training data or novel, pragmatic mergers of personal rights and copyrights, as in the case of the release for AI use of Grimes' voice: Legislators, collecting societies and, not least, artists and creators face a rocky road to keeping creative work competitive in the future. Their contribution to the social good is undisputed even in times of stochastically interpolatable indexing of culture – in a world where a virtual Kurt Cobain performs Nirvana songs in the style of vaporwave tracks in my living room – "for all tomorrow's parties".

(sih)