Protect Human Art & Artists from Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Protect Human Art & Artists from Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Started
October 9, 2022
Petition to
US President & Congress and 1 other
Signatures: 6,158Next Goal: 7,500
Support now

Why this petition matters

Started by Shawn Butler

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly progressing as a technology, offering many powerful and wonderful opportunities for all of humanity--ranging from better medicine to improved product quality and much, much more. Unfortunately, AI also has the power to completely eliminate the need for human art and artists, driving hundreds-of-thousands to millions of people out of work, and turning us all into the consumers of soulless, mechanized art.

You can see this today with free AI audiobooks from Google, free AI-generated images from DALL-E and far more. Already, the US Copyright office is being bombarded with companies and people trying to protect AI art as if it were human-created. If this happens--if machine art has the same protections as human art--there will be no chance for the human writer, narrator, singer, dancer, actor, musician or anyone else. Within 5-10 years, AI will be far better than humans in every area of artistic creation. Human artists are at risk of going extinct.

This petition is the beginning of an effort to protect all human art and artists from the threat posed by AI.

What we propose is a simple change to US Copyright and related laws, such that NO ARTWORK CREATED BY AI CAN EVER BE COPYRIGHTED for any reason. In this way, the technology can advance as needed, but human artists will be the only ones who can protect, and thus profit from, their art. But this is not enough by itself. There are three key points to our proposal:

  1. Make it illegal to copyright work created wholly, largely, or substantially by machines (AI or otherwise).
  2. Require all machine-generated art to be labeled something like "Made by Machine" or "Created by AI" and include the platform it was created on.
  3. Establish serious legal penalties for trying to pass AI or machine-generated art off as human.
  4. Work to do this in the USA and also standard international law, to protect all human artists, everywhere.

This will be a hard fight. Companies will claim that it impedes technological advancement and hurts consumers. Many artists will also oppose it. For instance, book authors might want the cheap-and-easy AI audiobooks to sell, instead of having to pay a human narrator. But that's the point; if we don't do this together, protecting all of us, none of will survive long in the art market of the future.

Will you help us protect human art and artists? It's not hard. Just sign this petition and share it. Write your congressperson. Tell your local artists you support them. Help get local artist groups and unions on board. We need everyone's help to get this done, and get it done quickly...before it's too late.

With your help, we'll take this to Congress and get legal protection for human art and artists.

Thank you! 

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If you want to learn how AI directly threatens authors, writers, etc., here's a link to my recent article on this and another one on audiobooks.

If you want to learn more about AI and it's threat to artists (and labor in general), this video is a good overview:



Thanks again.

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Signatures: 6,158Next Goal: 7,500
Support now
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Decision Makers

  • US President & Congress
  • US State Legislators