Mind Readings: Do You Know What Rights You Signed Away?

In today's episode, let's talk about your rights. Specifically, do you know what rights you signed away? Now, we got to do the warning. I am not a lawyer. I cannot give legal advice.

If you need legal advice for your specific situation, consult a real human attorney for legal advice specific to your situation. When it comes to generative AI, if you're unclear who that might be, I can give you a couple of names. Ruth Carter, they're really good at uh generative AI related IP law, and Sharon Torek, also really good at generative AI and IP law. I am not a legal resource. When you sign up for any online service, Facebook, Instagram, Salesforce, you agree to the terms of service, right?

And no, you cannot say I do not grant permission to, you know, that ridiculous Facebook posts going around. That's not how contracts work. Many content creators today are understandably upset about their works being used to train AI models. Saying, like, hey, you used my things to make your thing that can make more things like my thing, whether it's art or music or writing. But there's a very good chance you saw you agreed to do exactly that.

Go to the terms of service for any online service you use, Instagram, Facebook, Meta, you know, uh, Discord, you name it. I did this recently, and and I've I've looked at like 15 or 16 different terms of service. You are looking for one simple phrase create derivative works. That is the term you're looking for. If you agreed to allow a company to create derivative works, you have signed away your rights.

What does this mean? Again, remember, not a lawyer. A derivative work is a work made from another work. If you took the Mona Lisa, I painted horns on it, right? And the new work has Mona Lisa with horns, that's a derivative work.

You could see it was derived from another work. If you were the painter of that, if you were Leonardo da Vinci and you know, not dead. Um if you if you signed a license with me as a service provider that allows me to make derivative works, I could do that to your painting. I'd say, hey, here's here's here's Leonardo's painting, but now it's got horns. When you sign away the right to a company to make derivative works, they can take any copyrighted work and make a derivative of it.

And guess what an AI model is? Yep. An AI model is taking an existing work, art, music, video, photos, and making a mathematical representation of it, a translation, a derivative. You have made a derivative work of it. Which means that if you signed away that right and you allow a company to make a derivative work, because it's in the terms of service, you have no recourse to say, no, you can't use this for AI.

If you're a musician and you upload your music to YouTube, you have licensed YouTube to use it for AI models. Check the terms of service. I did. Same is true for Spotify. If you're an artist and you upload your art to Instagram, you have licensed Meta to use it to make AI models, like their image generator.

The same is true for Pinterest, for Deviant Art, for Facebook. If you're an artist and you're uploading your art to these services, you are giving them a license to make derivative works. You are giving them a license to use your works for AI. If you're a writer and you upload your book to Amazon, check the terms of service. You have licensed Amazon to use it for AI models.

This is true of every major online service. Every social network, LinkedIn, you name it, they're all the same. The ability to make derivative works allows a company to turn your stuff into training data for an AI model. Remember the golden rule of software. If you're not paying, you are the product, right?

It's not just ads that companies are selling to us. Our content that we provide them, like this video that I'm going to put on YouTube. I am giving this to Google, the owner of YouTube. And I've signed a license in the terms of service that says Google can use this to train AI models. You've agreed to it if you've uploaded a video to YouTube.

So you might say, Well, I don't want to do this. What are my choices? Don't use those services. That's it. You can't use those services.

That's the short version. Now, what this does mean, this is something that Scott Stratton was talking about recently on LinkedIn. There may be a market opportunity for creators to build a platform that does not permit AI training. There may be a market opportunity. And so an enterprising artist or videographer or musician might say, Hey, we're going to build a new platform that respects artists' rights and explicitly disallows the creation of AI models from our content.

It would be a massive amount of work to build that platform out. But that's a differentiating factor. That is a unique selling proposition. You might be able to attract other artists who are like, yeah, I don't want my stuff being used for AI. I'm going to post over here instead.

And then they would link to that place instead of YouTube or instead of Instagram or whatever. That there might be a there. So if you are that entrepreneur, maybe this is an opportunity for you. But for right now, if you're using someone else's service, there's a good chance you've signed away the rights to that prohibit them, that would prohibit them from using your works for to make AI models. You've given that right away when you signed the terms of service.

When you agreed to the terms of service. Can't give legal advice. Talk to a real lawyer like the ones I mentioned at the beginning of the show. Talk to you next time. If you enjoyed this video, please hit the like button.

Subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. And if you want to know when new videos are available, hit the bell button to be notified as soon as new content is live.