Dibs on Solving Generative AI’s Copyright Problem
Creatives & Generative AI Need a Proper Middleman. We’ve Got Just the Concept.
Defining the Generative Artificial Intelligence Copyright Problem
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Creative work & generative artificial intelligence need a proper middleman and I’ve taken a swing at the concept.
Setting the Stage
Market share dominance is a dirty game, and there are usually very real victims pressed into the dominator’s path.
In the pharmaceutical world, a new diabetes drug went on the market in the 2010’s. It had cleared initial FDA requirements. Now, the game was on: get as many patients on this drug as possible. Along the way, people began complaining to their doctors of side effects, and with enough of these complaints occupying the middle of a Venn-Diagram, a correlation should have been made and reported. This major drug manufacturer suppressed this information, putting their need to climb as high as they could first, before coming back to more solid ground. These initial report numbers came to represent active victims experiencing injury to their health, medical gas-lighting and more, a risk this pharmaceutical company was willing to take. The world huffed and it puffed and it blew the drug down. Well… no it didn’t actually. The drug is still available and helping many people today. However, finally there is a better picture on risks, interactions and complications that can save lives and medical dignity.
Generative AI tells a not-so-different story. Of course, no one’s lives or health are at risk in the same way, but we do know that generative AI is claiming swathes of livelihoods as the career landscape folds in on itself Mach-speed from creative to legal sectors and beyond. In fact, this has reignited major talks on Universal Basic Income, by none other than Sam Altman of OpenAI. I’d love to dive into the interesting and worrisome parts of his proposal another day.
Today, we focus more on the Creatives vs. Generative AI cases and the major business gap present in the Generative AI supply chain. So far, generative AI has been freeloading on its path to training its algorithms to spit out images and information at mind-bending speeds.
“These claims are already being litigated. In a case filed in late 2022, Andersen v. Stability AI et al., three artists formed a class to sue multiple generative AI platforms on the basis of the AI using their original works without license to train their AI in their styles, allowing users to generate works that may be insufficiently transformative from their existing, protected works, and, as a result, would be unauthorized derivative works. If a court finds that the AI’s works are unauthorized and derivative, substantial infringement penalties can apply.”
This has come to a head in a few star-studded cases including FKA Twigs taking her DeepFake message to the Senate Committee on Intellectual Property, and a full-circle moment between the 2013 Movie ‘Her’ and its voice-actor Star, Scarlett Johansson. She alleged Open AI’s new voice assistant ‘Sky’ sounded too suspiciously like her in its demo, challenging the company to cough up documents on how the voice was trained. Soon after this challenge, the voice was dropped. More cutting is finding out that Johansson had been dating Sam Altman within that timeframe, a man who owns OpenAI and had claimed that ‘Her’ is his favourite movie. That must’ve burned.
So the problem is clearly defined: Artificial Intelligence has a copyright problem, and no available products to solve for it.
When brainstorming how to build a product around a need, we explore HMW ‘how might we’ statements once a need has been clearly defined via market research.
“How might we solve the copyright problems - faced by creators and caused by AI - so that people can enjoy fair use of generative AI on both sides of the equation?”
Answers to the Problem
We need:
Credits, References, Permissions & Licensing of content of all types, to be learned from & generated.
Academia-Like References Manifestos for open-web scraping.
Creator Submission of Content/Sources
Permissive Environments/Facilitating Platform
Sustaining Payment/Business Model
Blockchain Tech could be nice to have in support.
Looking for Inspiration Across Industries
Music Distributors & Streaming
Splice Music Sample Library
Creative Market
The Music industry offers a great parallel for a ‘creative credits’ solution for various components relevant to generative AI but I don’t like the standards of this compensation model, especially in the per-stream valuations offered by streaming services. In Q1 2024, Spotify reported profits of over $1 Billion USD (yes, for a 3-month period), that they made streaming artists’ music. I’d like to see them give back more in the music community with those kinds of numbers, perhaps loosening their purse strings on lesser-known artists and venturing forward with efforts similar to the late Redbull Music Academy, now operated as Reb Bull Music. Another day we’ll touch on this again when exploring various brands who do a good (and awful) job of showing up for and giving back to their respective markets or communities.
Splice Music Library and Creative Market Labs are both marketplaces where creatives can offer their piecemeal creations - from musical samples like vocals, synths and drums, to visual assets like Typefaces, Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects templates - for a price, paying a portion of which to the platform. This runs very similarly to Substack, even. Except the marketplace and licensing aspects are more like an online store in the Splice and Creative market examples.
Now that we’ve got some basic elements thought out, what if we took it a step further and created the middle-man product concept, ready for action by OpenAI, Google or Microsoft?
Whats the Fulsome Product Proposal?
Introducing, PürMind.
“Ethically Sourced Generative AI Creatives”
What is it?
A standalone AI-learning licensing platform that connects projects to legally-bound, fair use of creative work. PürMind’s API can be injected into any generative AI bot including GPT-4, where creatives can upload or add permissions to their:
Art style
Voice
Research
Creative Writing
Information
Music & Musical Elements
You name it.
Where projects of all kinds can acquire the licenses required just as easily as purchasing a stock photo.
PürMind’s online platform and API will be accompanied by a third tool to satisfy broader use of open-web content: a reference scraping & tagging tool for open-web written and video content, so that even in the legal grey areas, creative sources are being cited and uplifted in the process. Credits and references due to all content sources scraped and chosen will appear in a ‘works cited’ manifesto that can be code-injected into the footer of any digital project. A secondary option will be available to create a dedicated reference page in cases where code injection cannot apply.
All chosen creatives generated will be supported by legal licensing of creative works where applicable, with these ‘works cited’ manifestos (possibly but not necessarily using blockchain tech) providing a platform for creatives to be recognized.
Use Case
Buddy has been a user interface designer for years, and recently he began using AI to generate the visual portions of websites he helps bring to life. The problem? Technically the art styles chosen were scraped from the open web and equate to stolen work. His business is not above board.
With PürMind, buddy can engage in the same processes, with outcomes that are fair and equitable. It can put him on the map of artists who will appreciate being mentioned in his manifesto, strengthening the creator community and economy.
Unique Value
Social Impact:
Creatives get a voice, a say, credit for their work, and references that can generate further exposure of their work. Through the references (need) or blockchain (nice to have), people can look through various components of a project to find where that generative aesthetic or work came from.
Older websites / articles can be reinvigorated with new traffic, credit.
Projects using this system are voting for ethical generative AI.
Income generation for creatives.
Shop Assured:
Don’t look over your shoulder: Legally binding permissions.
The voice you trained the bot to learn and use comes from a pool of creators who give their permission and receive credits and/or some form of compensation.
Moving Forward:
The luxury of reviewing references helps give credit where credit is due and gives a proper view of whether the information is trustworthy, relevant, unbiased and timely.
Creative Permissions
Creatives can submit their works, from art, graphic design, full literary works and more.
Creatives can submit work off platform with linking and ownership/origin confirmation (websites, literary works, YouTube channels and more).
Permissions can be granted via internal requests.
Permissions, credits and licensing agreements are created upfront in most cases as these asset classes enter a creative’s shop or catalogue.
License permissions can be set to manual or automatic by the creator.
Making Money
Much like Substack, Splice, Creative Market and various music distributors, there is usually a trade-off where the distributor or platform gets a percentage of these licenses. It’s important that creators enter the new digital age on strong, equitable footing and so I instinctively want to lean towards a model similar to Substack’s, where the platform takes 10% and the creator is left with the bulk of that value.
Of course, the exact model would require deeper understanding of the value chains but conceptually we have a starting point.
In the next section, we’ll explore the glaze on why the PürMind model has gone largely ‘undiscovered’, so to speak. However, once adoption of the model becomes clearly necessitated, it’s likely to see this creative economy spring into bloom, with bits and pieces of various creators getting paid for contributions across projects, thus creating a sustainable ecosystem for projects in-need providing streams of income and recognition for creators.
Poking holes
The resistance to this solution is all about timing. It’s more feasible to ‘Wild West’ it than it is to build an equitable platform people may use.
I’ve spoken to people who use AI to build user interface designs and art. Their main hesitation? It holds them back. “Why would I slow down?”
The generative ai itself won’t take more time but ensuring any outside sources are scraped and tagged will slow this process, naturally. The platform’s content would need to be optimized for AI workload.
Should everyone have to use PürMind? We suggest thinking of it as an impact investment like ‘The Rainforest Alliance’ certification for coffee. Legally clear, supporting living wages for workers involved, high-quality work from consenting workers - many of whom in this case are artists and academics.
Making it happen
Support or adoption of this project from a major Generative AI company would be best. Although the idea has already been validated by the presence of copyright legal disputes and the numerous accounts of creators complaining, adoption from the very industry PürMind exists in would be the strongest form of validation, from a secure and fitting home.
An ample team of software engineers to build and test iterations that fulfill base-functions, followed by nice-to-haves.
Marketing & messaging for traction and secondary idea validation: Get the public into PürMind’s mission, generating pre-launch waitlist signups from all types of creatives and originators.
What do you think of PürMind?
In the spirit of credits, if you like this idea and adopt it as a product, give OTG Co and the author some credit, a major shout out or offer of purchase of the concept. We don’t have the exposure or finances to bring this alive solo as we stand today but we believe in getting good concepts out there. The Wild West waits for no man but, I believe in making magic happen either way.
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