One of the biggest concerns around AI-generated content is the question of provenance or, in other words, “how did it come up with that?”
In some cases, the answer might be “by copying the works of others.” Indeed, there are a couple of lawsuits that are accusing major platforms of just that.
And who can blame the AI? After all, if you train something to replicate the best of the best from writing to photography, then why not use the best examples available?
Well, we have this little thing that we referenced above called copyright law.
And while imitation might be flattery when it comes to artistic inspiration as well as influences, this sort of goes out the window here – especially given that many AI platforms seek to displace and replace the people who taught it how to do all these wonderful things.
But Google promises its users it will be there for them, providing “generative AI indemnification” or, in other words, protections against copyright infringement lawsuits because of its AI-generated output.
Or, in Google’s own words, “If you are challenged on copyright grounds, we will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved.”
Essentially, Google promises users that output created using its AI tools among its suite of apps and services is generated using AI that is trained on legitimate sources and, if that is ever in doubt, the company will be there to back them up.
“Specifically, our training data indemnity covers any allegations that Google’s use of training data to create any of our generative models utilized by a generative AI service, infringes a third party’s intellectual property right.”
Of course, there are some stipulations, namely that your content doesn’t infringe on content from the outset.
“An important note here: you as a customer also have a part to play. For example, this indemnity only applies if you didn’t try to intentionally create or use generated output to infringe the rights of others, and similarly, are using existing and emerging tools, for example to cite sources to help use generated output responsibly.”
Any thoughts you might have on AI and its future impact on the field of photography are welcome in the comments below.
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[Google]
