The creeping inevitability of this fresh challenge to artists seems unfair, even to spectators. But this year Apple brought out its first books narrated by algorithms, a service Google has been offering for two years. The agency involved, Findaway Voices, now owned by Spotify, has since agreed to call a temporary halt and points to a “revoke” clause in its contracts. But the union SAG-AFTRA took up his case. In February, a Texas veteran audiobook narrator called Gary Furlong noticed Apple had been given the right to “use audiobook files for machine learning training and models” in one of his contracts. Meanwhile, AI innovations such as Jukebox are also threatening musicians and composers.Īnd digital voice-cloning technology is putting real narrators and actors out of regular work. He called it “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human”. Thousands have posted “Do Not AI” signs on their social media accounts and web galleries as a result.Ī software-generated approximation of Nick Cave’s lyrics notably drew the performer’s wrath earlier this year. The first line of defence is a growing movement of visual artists and image agencies who are now “opting out” of allowing their work to be farmed by AI software, a process called “data training”.

Generative software can produce images at the touch of the button, while sites like the popular NightCafe make “original”, data-derived artwork in response to a few simple verbal prompts. Poetry may still be a hard nut for AI to crack convincingly, but among the first to face a genuine threat to their livelihoods are photographers and designers. “So if we want to ensure the appreciation of human creativity, we need new ways of tracing content and the protection of smarter laws.”Ĭollective campaigns, lawsuits, international rules and IT hacks are all being deployed at speed on behalf of the creative industries in an effort, if not to win the battle, at least to “rage, rage against the dying of the light”, in the words of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

“Picture libraries are being scraped for content and huge datasets being amassed right now,” says Isabelle Doran, head of the Association of Photographers.

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