A senior executive at the tech firm Stability AI has resigned over the company’s view that it is acceptable to use copyrighted work without permission to train its products.
Ed Newton-Rex used to lead the audio team at a company based in the UK and US. He recently stepped down, telling the BBC that he finds it “exploitative” for AI developers to use creative work without getting permission.
Many big AI companies, like Stability AI, argue that using copyright content is “fair use.” This means they think they can use original content without needing permission from the owners.
Right now, the US copyright office is looking into generative AI and policy issues.
Newton-Rex wants to make it clear that he’s talking about all AI companies that share this view – and most of them do. In response to a former colleague on Twitter, the founder of Stability AI, Emad Mostaque, said the firm believes fair use “supports creative development.”
AI tools get trained using a ton of data, often taken from the internet without permission. Generative AI, which creates things like images, audio, video, and music, can then make similar material or even mimic the style of a specific artist if asked.
Newton-Rex, who is also a choral composer, wouldn’t be keen on giving his own music to AI developers for free. He believes that many creators produce content with the hope that their copyright will be valuable someday. However, without permission, their work is being used to create competition and might even replace them.
Newton-Rex previously built an AI audio creator for his old company called Stability Audio. He chose to license the data used for training and share revenue with rights holders. He admits that this approach might not work for everyone.
He remains optimistic about the benefits of AI and doesn’t plan to leave the industry. He hopes that globally, people will adopt an approach that says, “you need to get permission from the people who wrote it; otherwise, it’s not okay.”
Using copyright material to train AI tools is a hot topic. Some creatives, like comedian Sarah Silverman and Game of Thrones writer George RR Martin, have taken legal action against AI firms, claiming their work was taken without permission.
Earlier this year, a track featuring AI-generated voices of music artists Drake and The Weeknd got removed from Spotify after it was discovered that it was created without their consent. However, the boss of Spotify later said he wouldn’t completely ban AI from the platform.
Stability AI faced legal action from the Getty image archive, accusing them of scraping millions of pictures for training their AI image generator, Stable Diffusion. Some news organizations, including the BBC and The Guardian, have blocked AI firms from using their material from the internet.
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