Bill Conrad's Blog - Posts Tagged "ownership"
Whom Does the World Belong?
I randomly found the article “Whom Does the World Belong?” It begins with a peculiar copyright lawsuit. In the 20s, a person (allegedly) telepathically communicated with the dead. This sparked interest, and a book of conversations was published, The Urantia Book. This popular topic led to more books in the series with additional telepathic conversations.
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles...
In the 80s, a woman scanned in one of the books and distributed it for free, causing legal troubles. The defense argued that since the dead were speaking, their words did not belong to the author. The plaintiff could not argue against the defense without admitting the book was fiction. Brilliant! The jury agreed.
The main article focuses on the following: Who owns artificial intelligence-generated content? It focused on two main issues. Many files, including copyrighted material, are required to train an AI model. The second issue is that the people who developed the software and paid for the computing power expect something for their efforts.
As you can tell by my chaotic writing style and deranged content, I do not use AI to write. Writing is supposed to be fun, but auto-generating a pile of hogwash does not fit that bill. Not everybody agrees with my altruistic attitude, and AI applications like ChatGPT are now firmly in the driver’s seat of many publications, websites, and business documents.
This invention opens new territory in legal, ethical, and story areas, leading to a massive question of ownership. Even though I am not a popular author, I am sure my limited words have been used to train at least one AI model. Unfortunately, writers cannot prevent automated systems from scoping up every internet word.
I would be pretty upset if an AI user asked, “Develop a first-person psychological thriller story with a few intense scenes about a less-than-perfect author who is captured, forced to undergo a bizarre medical procedure, and interview his 500-year-old woman female captor.” and then the original text for my book, Interviewing Immorality, was “generated.” Alright, truth. It might be cool if my book provided 100% inspiration.
Passing along my exact words and concepts as somebody else’s is unethical. Therefore, I feel that legislation should be enacted to prevent this. The politicians agree; some are working on new copyright laws addressing AI. The problem is that AI technology muddies the water.
For example, anybody can copy one of my books into ChatGPT and ask it to “freshen up the story,” “change the characters,” “update the text,” or “improve the writing.” Legally, it would be difficult for me to argue with the results because, while the story would be nearly identical, the words would be different. How many romance books are out there? Boy meets girl or girl meets boy. Story bedrock is close to the surface; my book is no exception.
Conversely, those AI programmers and companies paying for server time deserve something. Millions use ChatGPT and the generated words have value. Thus, the people who worked hard on their creation indeed have the right to own the content, just like my books belong to me. This is the present ChatGPT content agreement:
As between you and OpenAI, and to the extent permitted by applicable law, you (a) retain your ownership rights in Input and (b) own the output. We hereby assign to you all our right, title, and interest, if any, in and to output.
For now, they offer free services and allow users to own the content. Yay? The problem is that this could change in a heartbeat, so users must check every time they use the service.
There is an obvious solution. The first page of my book and others contains an explicit copyright notice. Interviewing Immorality belongs to me because I wrote it, and does not contain any AI-generated words. Websites like ChatGPT also have clear legal notices concerning the content they generate. Of course, people ignore this legal mumbo-jumbo. “Click if you agree.”
Thus, if an author publishes AI-generated text, they must acknowledge generated words. Yeah, no. I have read several new publications that were clearly created with AI, but there was no warning. How do I know? ChatGPT has a distinctive writing style.
And am I guilty of not giving credit where credit is due? I recently wrote “Are Today’s Writers Spoiled?” I included a big chunk of ChatGPT content in that article, but I prepared readers with the following statement: Alright, I’m getting lazy. “Hey ChatGPT. List the problems facing modern authors.”
Thus, I correctly informed readers that ChatGPT generated some content. I felt the result was ethical, and no readers complained. Yet an open question remains. Who should take credit? I would argue that I was the creator, and the present ChatGPT content statement confirms this. I anticipate this will no longer be the case.
There is no doubt that AI-generated content will be everywhere. It is so bad I predict that a document without AI content will soon be a rarity. Is a sea of AI-generated works a bleak future? As a struggling author, I wish somebody put this genie back in the bottle. As a person, I must accept an AI-generated future.
You’re the best -Bill
January 15, 2025
https://www.bostonreview.net/articles...
In the 80s, a woman scanned in one of the books and distributed it for free, causing legal troubles. The defense argued that since the dead were speaking, their words did not belong to the author. The plaintiff could not argue against the defense without admitting the book was fiction. Brilliant! The jury agreed.
The main article focuses on the following: Who owns artificial intelligence-generated content? It focused on two main issues. Many files, including copyrighted material, are required to train an AI model. The second issue is that the people who developed the software and paid for the computing power expect something for their efforts.
As you can tell by my chaotic writing style and deranged content, I do not use AI to write. Writing is supposed to be fun, but auto-generating a pile of hogwash does not fit that bill. Not everybody agrees with my altruistic attitude, and AI applications like ChatGPT are now firmly in the driver’s seat of many publications, websites, and business documents.
This invention opens new territory in legal, ethical, and story areas, leading to a massive question of ownership. Even though I am not a popular author, I am sure my limited words have been used to train at least one AI model. Unfortunately, writers cannot prevent automated systems from scoping up every internet word.
I would be pretty upset if an AI user asked, “Develop a first-person psychological thriller story with a few intense scenes about a less-than-perfect author who is captured, forced to undergo a bizarre medical procedure, and interview his 500-year-old woman female captor.” and then the original text for my book, Interviewing Immorality, was “generated.” Alright, truth. It might be cool if my book provided 100% inspiration.
Passing along my exact words and concepts as somebody else’s is unethical. Therefore, I feel that legislation should be enacted to prevent this. The politicians agree; some are working on new copyright laws addressing AI. The problem is that AI technology muddies the water.
For example, anybody can copy one of my books into ChatGPT and ask it to “freshen up the story,” “change the characters,” “update the text,” or “improve the writing.” Legally, it would be difficult for me to argue with the results because, while the story would be nearly identical, the words would be different. How many romance books are out there? Boy meets girl or girl meets boy. Story bedrock is close to the surface; my book is no exception.
Conversely, those AI programmers and companies paying for server time deserve something. Millions use ChatGPT and the generated words have value. Thus, the people who worked hard on their creation indeed have the right to own the content, just like my books belong to me. This is the present ChatGPT content agreement:
As between you and OpenAI, and to the extent permitted by applicable law, you (a) retain your ownership rights in Input and (b) own the output. We hereby assign to you all our right, title, and interest, if any, in and to output.
For now, they offer free services and allow users to own the content. Yay? The problem is that this could change in a heartbeat, so users must check every time they use the service.
There is an obvious solution. The first page of my book and others contains an explicit copyright notice. Interviewing Immorality belongs to me because I wrote it, and does not contain any AI-generated words. Websites like ChatGPT also have clear legal notices concerning the content they generate. Of course, people ignore this legal mumbo-jumbo. “Click if you agree.”
Thus, if an author publishes AI-generated text, they must acknowledge generated words. Yeah, no. I have read several new publications that were clearly created with AI, but there was no warning. How do I know? ChatGPT has a distinctive writing style.
And am I guilty of not giving credit where credit is due? I recently wrote “Are Today’s Writers Spoiled?” I included a big chunk of ChatGPT content in that article, but I prepared readers with the following statement: Alright, I’m getting lazy. “Hey ChatGPT. List the problems facing modern authors.”
Thus, I correctly informed readers that ChatGPT generated some content. I felt the result was ethical, and no readers complained. Yet an open question remains. Who should take credit? I would argue that I was the creator, and the present ChatGPT content statement confirms this. I anticipate this will no longer be the case.
There is no doubt that AI-generated content will be everywhere. It is so bad I predict that a document without AI content will soon be a rarity. Is a sea of AI-generated works a bleak future? As a struggling author, I wish somebody put this genie back in the bottle. As a person, I must accept an AI-generated future.
You’re the best -Bill
January 15, 2025
