Latest news with #HumanArtistryCampaign
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Country Legend Warns of ‘Terrifying' AI Deepfakes
is among the artists speaking out against AI deepfakes. The country star visited Capitol Hill on Wednesday, May 21 to lend her support to the NO FAKES Act, calling for legislation to protect artists. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 The bill, officially known as the Nature Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe Act, which was recently brought back to the Senate and the House, would make unauthorized deepfakes of one's name, image, likeness or voice a federal crime. Prior to testimony from McBride, an organization known as the Human Artistry Campaign issued a press release revealing that 393 artists have signed on to support the bill, ranging from and to and the Band, Billboard called AI deepfakes 'just terrifying' during her testimony in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and Law, according to the outlet. 'I'm pleading with you to give me the tools to stop that kind of betrayal,' she added. McBride went on to say that passing the NO FAKES Act could 'set America on the right course to develop the world's best AI while preserving the sacred qualities that make our country so special: authenticity, integrity, humanity and our endlessly inspiring spirit…I urge you to pass this bill now.'
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Martina McBride Urges Congress to Protect Artists From ‘Terrifying' AI Tech, Says Deepfakes Are a ‘Betrayal'
Martina McBride urged Congress to support the NO FAKES Act to help protect artists from certain AI advancements on Wednesday. The country music star testified on Capitol Hill, saying that AI deepfakes were 'just terrifying' and asking for help defending musicians, actors and other artists from becoming victims to the latest tech. 'AI technology is amazing and can be used for so many wonderful purposes,' McBride said. 'But like all great technologies, it can also be abused, in this case by stealing people's voices and likenesses to scare and defraud families, manipulate the images of young girls in ways that are shocking to say the least, impersonate government officials or make phony recordings posing as artists like me.' She added: 'I'm pleading with you to give me the tools to stop that kind of betrayal. [The NO FAKES Act could] set America on the right course to develop the world's best AI while preserving the sacred qualities that make our country so special: authenticity, integrity, humanity and our endlessly inspiring spirit … I urge you to pass this bill now.' The NO FAKES Act seeks to provide federal protections for artists' voice, likeness and image being used in AI-generated deepfakes. It also looks to hold platforms that knowingly feature these deepfakes liable. The act also plans to create a federal right of publicity that does not expire at death but rather continues under a person's heir for no more than 70 years following death. 'It provides a remedy to victims of invasive harms that go beyond the intimate images addressed by that legislation, protecting artists like Martina from non-consensual deepfakes and voice clones that breach the trust she has built with millions of fans,' Mitch Glazier, CEO of Recording Industry Association of America, also said in hearing testimony. '[It] empowers individuals to have unlawful deepfakes removed as soon as a platform is able without requiring anyone to hire lawyers or go to court.' The testimony in support of the NO FAKES Act comes on the heels of the Human Artistry Campaign's open letter advocating for responsible AI use that was signed by over 400 entertainers back in March. Among the names were LeAnn Rimes, Bette Midler, Missy Elliott, Scarlett Johansson and Sean Astin. The post Martina McBride Urges Congress to Protect Artists From 'Terrifying' AI Tech, Says Deepfakes Are a 'Betrayal' appeared first on TheWrap.
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Yahoo
Opinion - AI companies are commiting mass theft and hiding behind the language of ‘training'
Ursula K. LeGuin once wrote, 'There is no right answer to the wrong question.' And while AI might struggle to understand the quip, we human readers get the point immediately. To solve a problem, you have to focus on what really matters about it. That's a big problem with the ongoing debate, most recently joined by Professor Nicholas Creel, over whether artificial intelligence models 'learn' the same way as humans. The simple answer, spelled out well in Erik J. Larson's book 'The Myth of Artificial Intelligence,' is that they don't. They can't handle or generate novelty, they become stymied when forced to operate with uncertainty or incomplete information, and they lack empathy and any real conception of understanding. They can copy and exploit almost infinite volumes of data, but they cannot extrapolate or intuit new truths from mere scraps of information as humans can. I asked Microsoft's AI, Copilot, the question, 'Does AI reason in the same way humans reason?' This is the answer I received: 'AI relies on large datasets and algorithms to make decisions and predictions. It processes information based on patterns and statistical analysis. AI follows predefined rules and models to arrive at conclusions. It doesn't have intuition or emotions influencing its decisions. AI can learn from data through techniques like machine learning, but this learning is based on mathematical models and not personal experiences.' As the Human Artistry Campaign's Moiya McTier has explained, real creativity flows from far more than crunching big data sets to pull out patterns and connections. It 'is the product of lived experience and grows organically from the culture, geography, family, and moments that shape us as individuals.' Thus, it's clear that AI learns and produces outputs in fundamentally different ways than humans do. But for those of us living and dealing with AI in the real world, including musicians like me whose work has been scraped off the internet and fed into AI models without any kind of consent, it's also clear this sterile philosopher's dispute isn't that important. Per LeGuin, the real question we should be asking is what AI does — and whether that is worth the cost. In order to develop their models and launch their pattern-detecting algorithms, it is indisputable that AI companies must cause a machine to reproduce copyrighted works or produce a new work derived from copyrighted works. They also distribute the work across a large network. These are three exclusive rights reserved to authors under federal law. Normally, a company that wishes to engage in this kind of activity would simply license the works from authors. But AI companies, ostensibly competitors, have all pretty much decided not to license the works but use them anyway, effectively setting the price for these copyrights at zero. That's a mass devaluing of the world's creative legacy — a huge cost in lost opportunities and jobs for real people. What's more, it will create a dumbed down and derivative culture and, if left unchecked too long, a gaping empty hole where the next generation of truly fresh or novel creations should be. AI models may excel at producing different versions of works they have copied and analyzed (reassembled from enough different sources to avoid immediate liability for plagiarism) but they cannot break the mold and give us something truly new. Sadly, AI evangelists seem determined to anthropomorphize commercial AI as cute little robots that learn the same way humans learn. They have coopted the language, reframing art as 'data' and mass copying as 'training,' as if AIs were pets. This is a fairytale designed to conceal the fact there is a cartel of trillion-dollar companies and deep-pocketed technology investors committing or excusing mass copyright infringement. Maybe that game would fool an AI, but we humans see right through it. David Lowery is a mathematician, writer, musician, producer, and singer-songwriter for the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
05-04-2025
- The Hill
AI companies are commiting mass theft and hiding behind the language of ‘training'
once wrote, 'There is no right answer to the wrong question.' And while AI might struggle to understand the quip, we human readers get the point immediately. To solve a problem, you have to focus on what really matters about it. That's a big problem with the ongoing debate, most recently joined by Professor Nicholas Creel, over whether artificial intelligence models 'learn' the same way as humans. The simple answer, spelled out well in Erik J. Larson's book 'The Myth of Artificial Intelligence,' is that they don't. They can't handle or generate novelty, they become stymied when forced to operate with uncertainty or incomplete information, and they lack empathy and any real conception of understanding. They can copy and exploit almost infinite volumes of data, but they cannot extrapolate or intuit new truths from mere scraps of information as humans can. I asked Microsoft's AI, Copilot, the question, 'Does AI reason in the same way humans reason?' This is the answer I received: 'AI relies on large datasets and algorithms to make decisions and predictions. It processes information based on patterns and statistical analysis. AI follows predefined rules and models to arrive at conclusions. It doesn't have intuition or emotions influencing its decisions. AI can learn from data through techniques like machine learning, but this learning is based on mathematical models and not personal experiences.' As the Human Artistry Campaign's Moiya McTier has explained, real creativity flows from far more than crunching big data sets to pull out patterns and connections. It 'is the product of lived experience and grows organically from the culture, geography, family, and moments that shape us as individuals.' Thus, it's clear that AI learns and produces outputs in fundamentally different ways than humans do. But for those of us living and dealing with AI in the real world, including musicians like me whose work has been scraped off the internet and fed into AI models without any kind of consent, it's also clear this sterile philosopher's dispute isn't that important. Per LeGuin, the real question we should be asking is what AI does — and whether that is worth the cost. In order to develop their models and launch their pattern-detecting algorithms, it is indisputable that AI companies must cause a machine to reproduce copyrighted works or produce a new work derived from copyrighted works. They also distribute the work across a large network. These are three exclusive rights reserved to authors under federal law. Normally, a company that wishes to engage in this kind of activity would simply license the works from authors. But AI companies, ostensibly competitors, have all pretty much decided not to license the works but use them anyway, effectively setting the price for these copyrights at zero. That's a mass devaluing of the world's creative legacy — a huge cost in lost opportunities and jobs for real people. What's more, it will create a dumbed down and derivative culture and, if left unchecked too long, a gaping empty hole where the next generation of truly fresh or novel creations should be. AI models may excel at producing different versions of works they have copied and analyzed (reassembled from enough different sources to avoid immediate liability for plagiarism) but they cannot break the mold and give us something truly new. Sadly, AI evangelists seem determined to anthropomorphize commercial AI as cute little robots that learn the same way humans learn. They have coopted the language, reframing art as 'data' and mass copying as 'training,' as if AIs were pets. This is a fairytale designed to conceal the fact there is a cartel of trillion-dollar companies and deep-pocketed technology investors committing or excusing mass copyright infringement. Maybe that game would fool an AI, but we humans see right through it.
