Generative AI is a marvel. Is it also built on theft?
T HE FOOTBALLERS look realistic at first sight but, on closer inspection, something is wrong. Their faces are contorted, their limbs are bending in alarming directions, the ball is slightly egg-shaped. Strangest of all, running across one footballer’s left leg is the ghostly trace of a watermark: Getty Images.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has caused a creative explosion of new writing, music, images and video. The internet is alive with AI-made content, while markets fizz with AI-inspired investment. OpenAI, which makes perhaps the most advanced generative-AI models, is valued at nearly $90bn; Microsoft, its partner, has become the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of $3.1trn.
But some wonder how creative the AIs really are—and whether those cashing in have fairly compensated those on whose work the models were trained. ChatGPT, made by OpenAI, can be coaxed into regurgitating newspaper articles that it appears to have memorised. Claude, a chatbot made by Anthropic, can be made to repeat lyrics from hit songs. Stable Diffusion, from Stability AI, reproduces features of images, including the watermark of Getty, on whose archive it was trained.
To those who hold the rights to these creative works, generative AI is an outrage—and perhaps an opportunity. A frenzy of litigation and dealmaking is under way, as rights-holders angle for compensation for providing the fuel that powers the creation of AIs. For the model-makers it is an anxious period, notes Dan Hunter, a professor of law at King’s College London. “They have created an amazing edifice that’s built on a foundation of sand.”
