Artificial intelligence (AI): how do you protect your work?

Image: Johan Lammerink, See_projection on reflective board_6x4m (photo Marc Blom)
For each column in the rechtReeKs series, the Arts Union chooses an appropriate image created by one of its member artists that has no relation to the issues in the article.

Sometimes it's quite a lot, writing a column every six weeks in addition to all the ongoing business and rush jobs that come with it. So to speed up the writing, I tried ChatGPT, an AI tool for drafting. It may have been due to my input, of course, but what came out was of little use to me. The text was very general and, above all, the content was not correct. Fortunately, ChatGPT gave me the wise advice to seek legal advice from a professional.

Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, is a form of artificial intelligence that can automatically create texts, images, audio and videos. To do this, AI systems need a huge amount of data, such as existing texts, images and audio clips. These are taken from websites and put into systems to train them to generate texts, images, music or voices derived from the original data.

AI systems need a huge amount of data to do this

Use of copyrighted work requires permission from the copyright holder. Whether this also applies to the use of works for training AI is not currently a foregone conclusion. For now, AI systems are making good use of this. They scrape together as much data as possible on the Internet. Once these are in a dataset, it is difficult for the system to "unlearn" this data again.

A legitimate question is how reasonable all this is. I hear a lot of concern, but also anger, because AI systems can only generate results - and thus make big money - because their system is trained with the work of creators, whose market position they then weaken by doing so. The absurd consequence of this is that, as a creative creator, you are effectively competing with yourself. And this without your consent or being informed about it at all.ïnformed that your work is being used.

AI systems can only generate results - and thus make big money - because their system is trained with the work of creators

Under the Copyright Act, copyright protection accrues only to creators who expressly invoke it in the form of a opt-out. This is the only right you have as an artist to act against unsolicited use by AI. With a opt-out indicate that your work should not be used to train AI systems. The more people use this, the better the position of the creators towards the AI companies, but also towards the politicians. You createëerates thereby a stronger position to make agreements, for example. If few creators invoke their copyright there is little incentive to do so. AI companies may then use your work anyway. The law does not specify how a opt-out exactly must be done, except that it must be "machine-readable." If you want to prevent AI systems from taking advantage of your work, use all the options below to comply as much as possible with the legal opt-out.

Under the Copyright Act, copyright protection accrues only to creators who expressly invoke it in the form of a opt-out

At haveibeentrained.com you can check whether your work has been used for training AI systems, and you can unsubscribe the work used for that purpose. Your work will then not be included in the next training rounds of some major AI systems. Also, placing a Robots.txt file in the backend-code of your a website is an important opt-out. This tells web crawlers looking for data that they cannot use the content of this website. Furthermore, you can put a clause on your website in which you agree with a opt-out invoke your copyright. For example, "© Copyright reserved. No automated text and data mining is permitted on this website." Finally, a tip is to use Glaze. This is not a opt-out, but rather a tool that changes your images in such a way that AI systems cannot extract useful information from them.

By doing as much as possible to opt-outs you not only protect yourself, but also help other creators én my colleagues. These are busy lobbying for legislative changes and compensation for human creators whose work is being used. Together we are making a bigger fist. Hopefully together we can limit the damage AI can do to the creative sector.

For a practical description of how to use these opportunities, see the Arts Union website on the page about AI, under the heading "What can I already do myself?"