You Ask, I Answer: Avoiding Generative AI, Part 1: Legal

This week we're going to do a five-part series that answers a very interesting question by my friend and colleague Mar, who asks, how do I avoid generative AI? Which is a really interesting question. So we're going to look at things like legal stuff, infrastructure stuff, so software and tools, marketing without the use of AI, and a whole bunch of practices and things you can do. So it's five parts. Come back to each part as you need.

Feel free to share them around. And understand that as the technology continues to advance, it's going to get harder to avoid, but it is still possible. You will need some level of technical sophistication to do so. So part one is today. Let's talk about legal stuff.

Number one. Well, actually, I should start before anything else. I am not a lawyer. I cannot give legal advice. Please seek an attorney that is qualified and in your jurisdiction for legal advice specific to your situation.

So when it comes to avoiding generative AI, there's like four things you need to do to make sure that generative AI is not impacting you substantially. Number one, for any service that you use as an individual, as a business, whatever, you need to check the terms of service with a fine-tooth comb. Normally I would say use generative AI, but in this case, we're trying to avoid that. So inspect the terms of service for one specific clause, and that clause is derivative works. What a service is allowed to do with your data.

If they are allowed to use it for derivative works, the derivative works clause means that they can take your work and turn it into another work, like using your data to train an AI model. Only use companies that either don't have a derivative works clause or they have a separate clause that specifically carves out AI and says we warrant that you know, as long as this terms of services in effect, we will not use your data to train AI models or share with vendors who train AI models. And that part's important because a lot of companies do have subprocessors and things like that. That you know, even if that company is not using it AI on your data, a subc a subprocessor or a subcontractor, maybe. So that's number one.

Inspect those terms of service like crazy. Number two, you should a hundred percent retain legal counsel that can issue things like cease and desist orders or pursue uh infringement of intellectual property, especially if you clearly put on all your documents on anything you publish, you know, but you explicitly forbid the use of your data to be used to train AI. If that is on every single thing you produce, then your legal counselor can issue cease and desist that you know no one can claim I didn't know I was supposed to do that. No, it literally says in in big letters on the bottom explicitly forbidden from using with AI, right? Or whatever your lawyer or your attorney uh recommends as the appropriate language.

Number three, you absolutely positively need to have a great attorney reviewing all of your contracts, upstream and downstream, so suppliers and customers, and saying no AI usage, none. So you would require from a vendor, no AI usage, you would require from a partner, an agency, no AI usage. You would require, you would tell a client, hey, we're not using AI, and you may not use our work product for AI purposes, right? And you'll have to negotiate with your clients as to whether or not that's okay with them, but you would need to put that in the contracts themselves. And number four is having very, very strict data privacy clauses in your contracts.

Um, and in any legal paperwork, because that's an additional layer of protection. If you have strong data privacy, by default, you also have strong intellectual property enforcement. Because you're saying, hey, this is what our data can't go to these places. We're enacting privacy restrictions, the data can't go to these places. Now, you do have to enforce all this stuff, and again, you're going to need a great lawyer to do that.

But that's the legal part of how you would reduce your exposure to generative AI. In the next part, we're going to look at uh infrastructure and security. 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.