Skyrim VAs are speaking out about the spread of pornographic AI mods.
The porn bit gets headlines, but it isn’t the core of the issue.
All of these models retain a representation of the original training data in their parameters, which makes training a violation of copyright unless it was explicitly authorized. The law just hasn’t caught up yet, since it is easy to obfuscate this fact with model mumbo-jumbo in between feeding in voices and generating arbitrary output.
The big AI players are betting that they will be able to entrench themselves with a massive data advantage before regulation locks down training and effectively kills any future competition. They will already have their models, and the worst case at that point is paying some royalties to people whose data was used in training.
I’d like to know how do you expect the governments or even private institutions to enforce this since most of the countries won’t care about foreign laws.
They can forbid companies from using the AI to do business in their areas, like the EU is doing with privacy laws. Google not being able to use its chatbot search in the US would be a big deal.
Sounds to me you would have to prove someone used AI in their work first, therefore making it difficult to realistically enforce.
All of these models retain a representation of the original training data in their parameters, which makes training a violation of copyright unless it was explicitly authorized.
How can you argue it’s copyright violation while also saying the law hasn’t caught up?
The law just hasn’t caught up yet
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t believe voices can be copyrighted. After all, if a human can replicate someone else’s voice, they get booked as professional impersonators rather than sued into oblivion.
The difference here is that the voice replication happens though AI now. Would we see the same outrage if the voices in these mods were just people that sounded like the original voice actors?
Copyright law needs to be fortified or a lot of voice actors are about to get screwed over big time. AI voice replication by modders is only the beginning, once big companies find the output acceptable these people may very well lose their jobs.
The legal grounds are that the AI is trained using voice lines that can indeed be copyrighted material. Not the voice itself, but the delivered lines.
The problem with that approach is that the resulting AI doesn’t contain any identifiable “copies” of the material that was used to train it. No copying, no copyright. The AI model is not a legally recognizable derivative work.
If the future output of the model that happens to sound very similar to the original voice actor counts as a copyright violation, then human sound-alikes and impersonators would also be in violation and things become a huge mess.
The problem with that approach is that the resulting AI doesn’t contain any identifiable “copies” of the material that was used to train it. No copying, no copyright. The AI model is not a legally recognizable derivative work.
That’s a HUGE assumption you’ve made, and certainly not something that has been tested in court, let alone found to be true.
In the context of existing legal precedent, there’s an argument to be made that the resulting model is itself a derivative work of the copyright-protected works, even if it does not literally contain an identifiable copy, as it is a derivative of the work in the common meaning of the term.
If the future output of the model that happens to sound very similar to the original voice actor counts as a copyright violation, then human sound-alikes and impersonators would also be in violation and things become a huge mess.
A key distinction here is that a human brain is not a work, and in that sense, a human brain learning things is not a derivative work.
I’m finally reading a comment from someone who actually knows how machine learning works. Too many people craft their argument before learning about the technology. Well, they think reading a few blog articles counts as research maybe.
That’s a decent theoretical legal basis, but the voice lines are property of the game company rather than the voice actors.
If this interpretation of copyright law on AI models will be the outcome of the two (three?) big AI lawsuits related to stable diffusion, most AI companies will be completely fucked. Everything from Stable Diffusion to ChatGPT 4 will instantly be in trouble.
Making derivatives of existing game assets is a core part of modding. I don’t see how this is any different from splicing existing voice lines to make them say whatever you want them to say.
Maybe it’s morally wrong to use the work of voice actors for NSFW purposes without their consent, but I’m not sure if it’s illegal from a copyright standpoint.
I think this could technically fall under name, image, likeness rights. Your voice could count as likeness and can’t be used without your concent. I know the big movie studios need to get permission from the family to do their creepy dead actor cameos like Disney did with Peter Cushing. I think this would be the same.
Damn it. All good things have to be ruined by creepy people.
It is a can of worms we were going to have to figure out either way. The power of these tools are impressive but they can get a little out of hand as shown with fools making NSFW mods with them but that is only one aspect. We have to keep in mind we can see companies screwing VAs out of jobs because of this tech as well which will likely have far more importance. In a way this tech can also be liberating for bad actors since we are now entering into a new phase of “Post truth” reality or I guess it may be better to say the democratization of fake news/false narratives, we were already at the door of this era but these AIs put us way past that door now. Its rather unfortunate since the power of this stuff can lead to some insanely cool concepts. Like the idea that fans could in theory restore cut content from games and even be able to replicate voice acting to make it feel closer to the original game. Hell how about inserting voice acting in games that never had it or were nonviable to have voice acting for every character in things like Baldur’s gate, neverwinter nights, planescape torment, original fallouts, etc. Many of these games are beloved classics but they are sometimes missing some of the things we are used to in more modern games.
Joan is Horrible…
Absolutely Black Mirror territory here. I do hope that game studios work on stopping this.
I don’t think it’s a good idea to have it be illegal to sound similar to another person.
Everyone has takes like this like we can’t just draw the line at making it illegal for a computer or algorithm to do this.
Who’s Joan? My Netflix only has a Madison_rogue is awful episode.
But in all seriousness, the tech is here and it’s here to stay. Legal stuff can curb it for a bit, but you know internet. It’s only going to grow.
There should be some other way to deal with it besides “Forbid everything now!”.
I’ve seen several future copyright systems being discussed which might provide a better way of doing things going forward. Like the one where all copyright is basically waived, but royalties are collected and distributed to all participants from any derivative work. Want to make a star wars fan movie? You’re free to do so (and everyone is), but every actor you use and every writer whose part of the lore you’re using gets a small cut from whatever to earn on it (so non-profit derivative work doesn’t require paying royalties, similar to parodies in the US).
Kinda like sampling in music currently works. Could be a better system than what we currently have, with corporations owning hundreds of years of usage for one story or likeness.
I feel like at some point this is going to lead to a very clunky ban on using AI for voices, which specifically exempts human impressionists.