Recently, Blackmagic Design noted on its Blackmagic Cloud website that it features “No AI Training.” Specifically, it says, “We will never use your media to train an AI.” With AI seemingly everywhere now, is this something videographers and video editors need to be concerned about? If AI can “learn” from anything posted on the internet, could your videos be part of the training? For many, it’s likely their work has already been used to train AI. After all, we recently reported that the CEO of Microsoft AI, Mustafa Suleyman, said that he considers all content on the internet to be freeware.
To put it all in context, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) first grew concerned that AI systems are “trained” with text found everywhere online. That means copyrighted works. We already know that we can train an AI system to write scripts. To do that, someone would input hundreds of scripts found online. Eventually, the AI system learns proper script formatting and the patterns of a hit movie. Then, it spits out its own script. This becomes a problem if AI delivers a work that contains scenes from copyrighted works — maybe even a classic line like, “Here’s looking at you, kid.” At what point has the bot crossed the creativity threshold?
For Guild writers, they don’t want their work being used and potentially misused. They want a way to keep their work out of AI training. This could be as simple as some kind of fair use warning on a website. It could also mean that we’ll see fewer and fewer scripts posted online. Could there even be lawsuits on the horizon?
What does that mean for content creators? Currently, whenever you load a video to YouTube, you should just assume that the system will assess your content to determine where and how the YouTube algorithm should recommend it. This is how YouTube works. YouTube categorizes your video in hundreds of different ways with the idea that it will make it in front of the eyes that will want to view it. That’s not a bad thing.
What if AI trainers are using your unique content? Let’s say you create a cooking show that really takes off. Hypothetically, somewhere else is an AI Trainer who inputs all the best cooking shows online into their system. The goal is to create an AI-generated cooking show that will draw bigger numbers. The technology is not quite there yet, but it’s coming. At what point do they cross the creativity threshold? Is it when their background looks just like yours? Or when their host uses your specific catchphrase? How does this affect the travel or wildlife videographer?
We’re not saying that there isn’t a place for AI generation. For example, Adobe recently introduced a tool called “Generative Extend.” This uses your video and makes the clip longer, so you can execute a transition. That’s a brilliant tool, but there has to be a way to opt our videos out of AI training. We work too hard to have our creativity walked across the threshold and become a generative AI video.
We need an option to opt our content out of training AI
