Is AI Stealing From Everybody?

Published: 06 Apr 2023 5:52 PM +00:00 Updated: 06 Apr 2023 8:37 PM +00:00

AI is getting more and more popular from AI art to AI voices to AI videos to AI chatbots and much more. Put simply, AI is everywhere. Accordingly, there are lots of ethical concerns being raised over content created by or with AI. One of the big questions people have when it comes to AI is whether or not something created by an AI is actually original or if it's merely other content made by other people that's been repurposed.

So, in this article, we'll tell you whether or not AI is stealing from everybody.

Is AI Art Stealing?

So, how is AI art even created? Well, first off, it's a much more complicated process than can be explained in just a few sentences. Nonetheless, the basic idea is that you take a complicated algorithm and then 'train' it by feeding it thousands and thousands of images to 'teach' it how to make similar images.

Because AIs are trained by way of real art, real photographs, and real content made by human beings, people argue that art created by AI is merely a really complicated amalgamation of existing artwork created by other people. This can sound convincing at first blush, but there's actually a lot more to it.

For example, imagine you decide you want to paint something. You're not a painter though, you've never painted before, so you need to get an idea of how the whole painting process works. You decide you'll start with an easy painting: a basic landscape. So, you search for landscape paintings online and study them for ages, and then you paint your own landscape.

Did you steal from the paintings you saw? Did you make your own original painting? Most people agree that, in this example, you're still making your own painting, even if you 'trained' yourself by looking at other paintings made by other people. This is how AI works.

It's true that some people argue that even if the process is the same that the fact an AI is creating something means that it's stealing whereas if a human does the same thing it's not stealing, but it's generally pretty difficult to argue this in a meaningful way outside of a feeling you have.

Is AI Audio Stealing? Impersonation?

Chances are you've seen AI-generated clips of celebrities, politicians, popular content creators, etcetera saying things that they never actually said, thanks to AI. These clips beg the question of if using AI to recreate somebody's voice is stealing or if perhaps it's an impersonation of some kind.

Once again, this can seem like a pretty good question. After all, if you can simply type up a paragraph, press a button, and it gets spoken aloud by an exact copy of, say, Kanye's voice thanks to AI, that seems pretty directly not anything original but rather just taking from actual humans.

But, once again, it's more complicated than that. Take impressions. Across the internet, you'll be able to find uniquely talented folks who can do absolutely perfect impressions of famous figures, politicians, and, really, anybody you can think up. However, even if they're recording clips doing a particular voice, nobody accuses them of stealing or impersonating someone.

Once again, it comes down to the idea that if something is created by an AI it must be stealing, while if it's done by a human in the same way for the same end result, well, that's perfectly fine.

Are AI Chatbots Stealing?

Chatbots like Bing's bot, Google's, ChatGPT, FreedomGPT, or anything else are becoming a part of daily life, but many wonder where the information they get comes from, and if it's actually unique and coming from the AI or if it's pulled from somewhere else.

This is a bit more of a complicated topic. If the particular chatbot in question is connected to the internet, a chatbot may be doing something akin to a more complicated Google search for you. This information, naturally, will come from the internet and not direct from the AI in the same way it would if you asked a chatbot to, for example, write you a poem.

But what happens if you do ask a chatbot to write you a poem? Well, that situation is a lot more similar to what happens when you generate art with an AI. The AI is trained by way of countless other poems and literature to 'learn' how to create similar works. Once again, the work from an AI may well be informed by human-created work, but it's not human-created work itself, much like how actual human poets write poems, too.

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