Technology

It would be a shame to lose valuable things like there I ruined it, which seem to be a perfectly fair use of copyrighted works. Copyright is already too strong.

but international copyright laws still mostly work in spite of that, so I imagine that regulations on this type of AI would mostly work as well.

The thing is, people still don't grasp the ease with which this will be possible and to a large degree already. This doesn't need hours of training anymore, you can clone voices with three seconds of audio and faces from a single image. Simple images can be clicked together in seconds with zero effort. Give it a few more years and you video can be created with equal ease.

You can regulate commercial use of somebodies likeness, which it largely already is, but people doing it for fun is unstoppable. This stuff is here today and it will get a whole lot more powerful going forward.

IMO people doing it on their own for fun/expression is different than corporations doing it for profit, and there's no real way to stop that. I think if famous AI constructs become part of big media productions, it will come with a constructed moral justification for it. The system will basically internalize and commodify the repulsion to itself exploiting the likeness of dead (or alive) actors. This could be media that blurs the line and proports to ask "deep questions" about exploiting people, while exploiting people as a sort of intentional irony. Or it will be more like a moral appeal to sentimentality, "in honor of their legacy we are exploiting their image, some proceeds will support causes they cared about, we are doing this to spread awareness, the issue they are representing are too important, they would have loved this project, we've worked closely with their estate." Eventually there's going to be a film like this, complete with teary-eyed behind-the-scenes interviews about how emotional it was to reproduce the likeness of the actor and what an honor it was. As soon as the moral justification can be made and the actor's image can be constructed just well enough. People will go see it so they can comment on what they thought about it and take part in the cultural moment.

yeah i don't think it should be legislated against, especially for private use [people will always work around it anyway], but using it for profit is really, viscerally wrong

We need something like the fair use doctrine coupled with identify rights.

If you want to use X's voice and likeness in something, you have to purchase that privilege from X or X's estate, and they can tell you to pay them massive fees or to fuck off.

Fair use would be exclusively for comedy, but still face regulation. There's plenty of hilarious TikToks that use AI to make characters say stupid shit, but we can find a way to protect voice actors and creators without stifling creativity. Fair use would still require the person's permission, you just wouldn't need to pay to use it for such a minor thing -- a meme of Mickey Mouse saying fuck for example.

At the end of the day though, people need to hold the exclusive and ultimate right to how their likeness and voice are used, and they need to be able to shut down anything they deem unacceptable. Too many people are concerned with what is capable than with acting like an asshole. It's just common kindness to ask someone if you can use their voice for something, and respecting their wishes if they don't want it.

I don't know if this is a hot take or not, but I'll stand by it either way -- using AI to emulate someone without their permission is a fundamental violation of their rights and privacy. If OpenAI or whoever wants to claim that makes their product unusable, tough fucking luck. Every technology has faced regulations to maintain our rights, and if a company can't survive without unbridled regulations, it deserves to die.

At least that was just smoke screen trickery and not literal digital necromancy

Yeah, there's a significant difference between a recording and generating.

• The ethics of generating images, sound, or other representations of real people is considered no different than active imagination when done for fun and in privacy.

That doesn't sound right at all. Copying and processing somebody's works for the sake of creating a replica is completely different than imagining it to yourself. Depending on how its done, even pretending that it's being done solely for yourself is incorrect. Many AI-based services take feedback from what their users do, even if they don't actively share it.

Just like looking at something, memorizing it and imitating it is allowed while taking a picture may not be, AI would not necessarily get the rights to engage with media as people do. It's not an independent actor with personal rights. It's not an extension of the user. It's a tool.

Then again I shouldn't be surprised that an AI used and trained by AI users, replies about its use as basically a natural right.