Published Article
Where’d You Get That Sound?: Original Artists v. AI
Read Time: 1 minHillel Frankel (Nashville) authored an article for the Tennessee Bar Journal’s November/December issue on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in artistic creations, and the related rise of major rights questions across the artistic spectrum.
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in artistic creations has launched major rights questions across the artistic spectrum. Where does AI go to scrape for the knowledge used in responding to AI prompts to create new content? How many works or catalogues does AI need to ingest to respond effectively to a prompt? What constitutes fair use, or substantial similarity and originality, when a work is mixed into numerous pieces of data? As AI continues its rapid development, creative industries and artists must keep pace to address issues of misappropriation and infringement that threaten artistic control and the integrity of their artistic persona and creations.
Ultimately, the key to controlling artistic catalogues and compensating artists for the use of their copyrighted work lies in the tracking of original works either through detective work in determining the origin or through watermarking or other branding technologies. New technology is becoming available to watermark or otherwise imprint original content so that the use, even in micro fractions of a work ingested by AI, can be tracked to the new work. This will enable an artist to demonstrate that their work contributed to a collective work and that the owner of a copyright or license has a financial interest in any new work produced from an AI project, thus requiring permission for the use of the original work, and a negotiated compensation for the holder of the copyright or license.
McGlinchey Summer Associate Kayleigh Thomas assisted with the writing of this article.