ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
This week’s selection of AI-related stories has an interesting common theme centered around new AI platforms. As we’re increasingly seeing, it’s a theme that reflects the fact that this technology is now settling into becoming a part of the landscape, and everyone concerned is finding ways to navigate that landscape. For some, these developments will be a welcome pragmatism and seriousness after endless hype. For others, they will be a worrying normalization of the until-recently unthinkable.
That theme is the attempt to find a way to bring creators and tech platforms together in such a way that gives the former the copyright protection they are looking for and the latter the access to material they are seeking, and in doing so, give both the freedom to pursue their goals together.
First up comes Created by Humans. What makes this interesting is the presence at the helm of Trip Adler, the person behind the longevity and large subscription reading platform Scribd. The founders call their platform an “AI rights licensing platform for creators.” What that means is that it allows creators to sell to AI companies the rights to use their works for training purposes and be compensated accordingly. In a landscape where AI companies are doing large deals with large publishers, I guess their hope is this will appeal to individual and, in particular, indie authors who don’t want to miss out.
One of Created by Humans’ cofounders, interestingly, is the biographical writer Walter Isaacson. He, of course, penned the hugely bestselling biographies of both Steve Jobs and Elon Musk.
At the same time, the Copyright Clearance Center is proclaiming that it is possible to be pro-copyright and pro-AI. Their new development looks to provide AI rights in the Annual Copyright License. This is essentially a similar principle to that behind Created by Humans. And that principle, at its simplest, is that when we consider the rights we can sell or license for our work, alongside territory, format, media, and translation rights, we should consider AI rights.
Time will tell if the idea catches on.
