We asked businesses and creatives: Would you sue if AI was training on your work?

There is more to original content than just copyrights. And it’s not just money, either.

Taylor Swift is not the only one who has moved to regain the master recordings and rights to her music. While her story hasn’t got much to do with artificial intelligence (AI), other businesses are still in court trying to win the same – the rights to their own original work and the chance to ban AI from learning from creatives’ work – at least without proper acknowledgement of the authors’ work and compensation for it.

For instance, OpenAI is appealing a court order that requires it to preserve all ChatGPT output data indefinitely in an ongoing copyright case brought by The New York Times.

Meanwhile, The New York Times has shown that fair deals with AI companies are possible. It licensed its content to Amazon for use in Alexa and other AI tools. This highlights how publishers are increasingly seeking compensation for their work and demonstrating that responsible media-tech partnerships can be achieved.

But what about others? We asked businesses and creatives how they feel about AI learning from their work, and if they would sue over it if they could.

Eyes were twitching, and hearts were racing.

Design and production studio owner: “I’d sue”

Ronny Young is the founder of OddBeast, a motion design and production studio that creates videos, usually with the use of heavy CGI and animation. As Young puts it, AI has been a “hot-button” issue as the studio’s revenue is generated through its teams’ original designs and creative output.

“I don’t feel so great knowing our work is being used freely to train AI tools. It would be better to at the very least compensate artists for training AI on our work. I do not agree with the idea that once something is on the internet, it's suddenly public domain. Imagine if that were true for Disney. Their lawyers would have a field day!” - says Young.

He believes there are artists out there with a distinct style, and AI shouldn't just be able to turn it into a commodity.

Studio Ghibli comes to mind. The craft of their films, the hours put into it, make it so special. Of course, I hope people see the value of a true Hayao Miyazaki piece and how an AI replication simply can't hold a candle to it. My gut tells me audiences do care enough to still want "real" art,” he says.

When asked if he would follow in the footsteps of big names like Getty Images and The New York Times which are going to court over disputes of AI learning, Young wasn’t hesitant to answer – he’d sue, and demand AI companies to pay creators to train off their work as that is “the best/only way.”

AI cracks social media algorithms faster and manipulates people’s decisions

Stephanie Kondrchek is on admission to make people go and stay vegan. That’s why she creates vegan recipes, takes original photos, videos, and publishes them on her website.

She is concerned about AI being able to create and publish news, high-quality content frequently. That’s something social media algorithms tend to prefer. Kondrchek asks, what human can create content faster than AI?

“A recipe that takes me a week to develop, photograph, and publish, can be done by AI in under an hour. Even just because of sheer volume, that AI content will typically get in front of more eyeballs than human-created content. The problem is, AI can't taste a recipe, and the humans who are trying to earn money by maximizing their clicks typically aren't testing these AI-generated recipes, either,” says Kondrchek.

As Kondrchek focuses on promoting a vegan diet, she worries that AI-generated recipes will not only outperform human work but will also demotivate people to go vegan.

“But real people are using these recipes to cook for their families. How many people have spent money on ingredients for a recipe that got thrown in the trash because the "creator" didn't bother to test it? How many people will unknowingly try an AI-generated recipe as their first taste of vegan food and decide that it's impossible to be vegan because the food is awful?” wonders Kondrchek.

According to her, the best way to deal with this issue is by creating new laws that regulate the use of AI, as using a machine to copy and regurgitate content is not ethical and should not be legal.

Creatives are being raised to be AI babysitters

Katia Farmer and her friend James Fray are working on game design and are about to introduce their first, as they say, cozy computer game, Hive & Hollow. They share game, beekeeping, and life updates on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch.

Farmer says she has had the "what do we do about AI" conversation with quite a few of her colleagues.

“The comparison keeps coming up that ‘painters thought photography would kill art, but painting is still around!’ Respectfully, I do not think the situations are the same. I feel uncomfortable using AI, not just because it will and has taken jobs. I feel uncomfortable because it has stolen the thought and years of dedication that workers have put into their craft,” says Farmer.

She is vocal about her concerns about newly graduated individuals trying to make a career in this crazy economy.

As she puts it, AI makes the future seem bleak since companies tend to delegate a lot of work to machines that do it faster and cheaper.

“As a self-employed creative, I hope I'll be able to create the security I want for myself that few companies are offering in this field. Even then, I know I'm not entirely safe from AI. I wish I could say that I had the answers to what the future holds. I can only keep moving forward and hope I'll be okay tomorrow,” says Farmer.

But how about you, dear reader, would you sue?