The AP partnership with OpenAI may hope to improve the accuracy of the farmed content but does it really resolve the greater issues?
Remixing and its step sibling, outright plagiarism, have always been staples of poor, unimaginative writers. A little of this, a little of that, add a new headline, change the lead and voila! AI simply takes faux writing to a new level by generating it faster and easier than ever before.
I graduated from two top journalism programs which drilled the sanctity of original authorship, attributable sources and verification into our entire being. (We were also taught the sanctity of reporting the news objectively, but that’s another story.)
Now AP has welcomed AI literally into the pressroom, calling former truths into question. Who (or what) is the potential plagiarist? Or the libeler? What is fair use? What is intellectual property? At what point do the words of one become the claimed authorship of another? Or many? Is it fair use or foul play or bad attribution? Future legal cases should prove interesting. And: At what point does the AI-created content become the new ‘original’, obliterating its predecessor(s)?
Of course, does any of this really matter in a world where we are just becoming content creators for each other? #chatGPT #ethics #libel #journalismlaw #authorship #tech
