TED CEO Chris Anderson interviewed Sam Altman and asked some tough questions about copyright and “IP theft.” Altman seemed to feel a bit of pique when a few audience members clapped in approval of Anderson’s question. A bit uncharacteristic of Altman. Take a listen.
Transcript:
Anderson: So this impressed me too. I asked it to imagine Charlie Brown as thinking of himself as an AI. Came up with this. Thought this was actually rather profound what do you think?… I mean the writing quality of some of the new models not just here but in detail is it’s really going to a new level
Altman: Yeah i mean this is an incredible meta answer but there’s really no way to know if it is thinking that or just saw that a lot of times in the training set and of course like if you can’t tell the difference how much do you care?
Anderson: So that’s really interesting it doesn’t we don’t know um isn’t there though um like at first glance this looks like IP theft like do you guys don’t have a deal with the Peanuts estate or …?” [few claps from audience]
Alman: Um, you can clap about that all you want, enjoy. [few laughs from audience] Um, I will say that I think the creative spirit of humanity is an incredibly important thing and we want to build tools that lift that up that make it so that new people can create better art better content write better novels that we all enjoy i believe very deeply that humans will be at the center of that. Um I also believe that we we probably do need to figure out some sort of new model around the economics creative output. Uh I think people have been building on the creativity of others for a long time people take inspiration for a long time um but as the access to creativity gets incredibly democratized and people are building off of each other’s ideas all the time I think there are incredible new business models that we and others are excited to explore. Exactly what that’s going to look like um I’m not sure. Clearly there’s some cut and dry stuff like you can’t copy someone else’s work but how much inspiration can you take if you say I want to generate art in the style of these seven people all of whom have consented to that how do you like divvy up how much money goes to each one these are like big questions. But every time throughout history we have put better and more powerful technology in the hands of creators i think we collectively get better creative output and people do just more amazing stuff.
Anderson: I mean an an even bigger question is when they haven’t consented to it. In our opening session Carol Cadwalada um showed you know chat GPT give a talk in the style of Carol Cadwalada and sure enough it gave a talk that wasn’t quite as good as the talk she gave but it’s pretty impressive and um she said okay it’s great but I did not consent to this. How are we going to navigate this? Like like isn’t there a way should it just be people who consented or shouldn’t there be a model that somehow says that any named individual in a prompt whose work is then used they should get something for that?
Altman: So right now if you use our image gen thing and say you know I want something in the style of a living artist it won’t it won’t do that. Um but if you say I want it in the style of this particular like kind of vibe or this studio or this art movement or whatever it will um I and obviously if you’re like you know output a song that is like a copy of the song it won’t do that. The the question of like where that line should be and how people say like this is too much we we sorted that out before with copyright law and kind of what fair use looks like. Again I think in the world of AI there will be a new model that we figure out um but….
Anderson: From the point of view I mean the world’s full of it’s creative people are some of the angriest people right now or the most scared people about AI and the difference between feeling your work’s being stolen from you and your future is being stolen from you and feeling your work is being amplified and can be amplified those are such different feelings and if if we could shift to the other one to the second one that I think that really changes how much humanity as a whole embraces all this.
Altman: Well again I would say some creative people are very upset some creatives are like “This is the most amazing tool ever i’m doing incredible new work.” Um but you know like it’s it’s definitely a change and I have a lot of like empathy toward to people who are just like I wish this change weren’t happening this is I liked the way things were before I like the…
Anderson: Sorry but in principle you can you can calculate from any given prompt how much there should be some way of being able to calculate what percentage of a subscription revenue or whatever goes towards each answer in principle it should be possible if one could get the rest of the rules figured out it’s obviously complicated you could calculate some kind of revenue share.
Altman: Yeah if you’re a musician and you spend your whole life your whole childhood whatever listening to music and then you get an idea and you go compose a song that is inspired by what you’ve heard before but a new direction it’d be very hard for you to say like “This much was from this song I heard when I was 11 this much from when I saw that.”
Anderson: But that that’s right but we’re talking here about the situation where someone specifically in a prompt names someone.
Altman: Yeah so I Well again right now if you try to like go generate an image in a name style we just say that living we don’t do it but I think it would be cool to figure out a new model where if you say I want to do it in the name of this this artist and they opt in there’s a revenue model there that’s okay i think that’s a good thing to explain so….
Anderson: So I think the world should help you figure out that model quickly and I think it’ll and I think it’ll make a make a huge difference.