11,500 creatives sign letter decrying AI internet 'scraping'

11,500 artists, writers and other creatives have demanded a change in the way AI is 'trained' by gobbling up all the copyrighted material on the internet and regurgitating it as its own. You may know that the various AI bots such as ChatGPT and Bing's Copilot are trained using existing material on the internet created by 'creatives'. 

These people have the copyright to this material which has been totally ignored. These creatives are complaining bitterly as they have a right to do. As they should because this is mass theft. Mass breach copyright on a scale that has never been seen before. 

The scale is unimaginable as it concerns everything on the vast internet. The storage compacity of these bots is beyond comprehension and the servers cost huge amounts of money and power to run but the dominant internet companies such as Google and Open AI have the kind of resources required.

The letter is incredibly compact. Here it is. It beautifully summarises the problem. It is also contained in a tweet which is published here too. Please sign the letter if you are one of those who have lost out.

Click this to go to the place where you can sign the letter.

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

Today we’re publishing a statement on AI training, signed by 10,000+ creators already:

“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

Signatories include… pic.twitter.com/AqVaEThMs4

— Ed Newton-Rex (@ednewtonrex) October 22, 2024

There are a number of active lawsuits running at this time in fighting what has been described in one as "systematic theft on a mass scale". AI scraping will lead to more litigation for compensation and injunctions to stop it I predict. It has dramatically harmed hundreds of thousands, probably millions of websites, some terminally. It has cost the jobs of many thousands of website workers. And nothing is being done about it except this brilliant letter and some litigation. There should be mass uproar.

People should complain through their actions.

-----------------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also, sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. And, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable. Finally, (!) I often express an OPINION on the news. Please share yours in a comment.