AI: destroying to create

PAOLO KERNAHAN

AI WAS supposed to free us up to do more fulfilling things, like writing that first, great novel. But AI is writing novels too, so it’s back to the caves for humanity, I suppose.

The idea of sounding the alarm over AI is like trying to unexplode the atom bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There are lots of Oppenheimers – AI developers and experts – flitting from chat shows to podcasts to articles and manic street preaching about the existential menace of so-called superintelligence.

AI has already replaced countless jobs, and it’s only just getting warmed up. What’s of particular interest, though, is the impact of large language models and other species of this rapidly emerging and evolving tech to copy the essence of what it means to be human – our art, novels, poetry, films, photography, music, etcetera.

American author and attorney David Baldacci made a stunning claim before a Senate judiciary subcommittee on crime and counterterrorism – no more copyright protection for anyone. Baldacci told the subcommittee that AI companies have been sending out sentinels to scrape websites which have pirated his books to train their models. This practice has thousands of authors caught in the undertow of this fundamental shift.

For those who think AI couldn’t possibly replicate the unique voice of a VS Naipaul, Oscar Wilde, or Lee Child – think again. Indeed, I always thought my true writing ability is rooted, not in any literary prowess per se, but in my inimitable, somewhat jaded view of the world. ChatGPT made me realise I’m not nearly as special (with a lower-case s) as I thought.

I discovered that, within seconds of a rudimentary prompt, the AI can reproduce writing that accurately mimics my style, tone – even my curmudgeonly affect. It’s disgostin. Typically, it can take me between four-six hours to meticulously craft a column, but ChatGPT can produce comparable work faster than I can burn toast.

Creative piracy isn’t new. People have been stealing jokes, ideas, written works, music, and everything else since the Earth cooled. Attendees at Shakespeare’s plays would reportedly reproduce his creative genius as best they could from memory, and shady publishers would peddle copies for profit.

Copyright laws are supposed to offer a measure of protection for creatives, but in this new open-source age, where everything is up for grabs, the legal murk is increasingly unnavigable. That’s because you can’t determine or legislate how people use the technology. It gets even more layered than the legal angle.

A company accustomed to hiring an agency that hires a photographer who hires models and rents studio space, props and other equipment and pays caterers for a shoot that can cost thousands will simply go to any one of the AI image-generating models to produce pictures indistinguishable from the real thing at low or no cost. The same applies to higher-end commercial film productions that command hundreds of thousands.

Hustlers with no talent for writing are using the models to churn out books and drown platforms like Amazon with them. There are an estimated 12 million e-books on Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Nearly 8,000 new ones are added every day.

You can go ahead and double that number in the next few years. While Kindle Publishing requires that “authors” identify the use of AI content in any written works, that doesn’t matter. The net effect of AI on the literary landscape is intensified congestion on the platform, making it harder for legitimate authors to earn a living.

Ultimately, money determines how AI is used, and this has remapped the creative landscape. Some creative sectors will inevitably be displaced by the technology. Filmmakers, photographers, graphic artists, writers and musicians are all facing uncertain futures. Advertising agencies, which commercialise creative output, will either become AI agencies or go out of business altogether.

The only way for people who earn a living through their creativity to prevail is to build an unassailable, inimitable personal brand. Millions are already using social media to sell creative products and services through video marketing, which connects them with customers and clients. These creatives are using their faces, voices and storytelling techniques to distinguish themselves from a deluge of content and sales pitches – a fair bit of which is AI-generated.

The Danish government recently promulgated legislation that allows its citizens to copyright their whole bodies. This is a recognition of what we should all be focused on – packaging ourselves as an indivisible element of our creative output. Faces and voices and the narratives we share are the qualities AI can’t replicate, no matter how evolved the tech gets.