Speaker 1: Jiaoda.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
Speaker 2: daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. Artificial intelligence
Speaker 2: has been the hot topic of debate in the business
Speaker 2: world for the last few years, but increasingly it's an
Speaker 2: area that is encroaching on the creative industries. The latest
Speaker 2: open ai update is so advanced fans online have used
Speaker 2: it to eerily replicate the hand drawn art style of
Speaker 2: Japanese anime favorites Studio Ghibli. It's just the latest sign
Speaker 2: of AI coming for the arts, with recent headlines also
Speaker 2: highlighting concerns over entirely artificial models in ad campaigns and
Speaker 2: fake movie trailers that look close to the real thing.
Speaker 2: What protections are there in place for our creative sector
Speaker 2: or could they become one of the first industries to
Speaker 2: fall to our new AI overlords. Today on the Front Page,
Speaker 2: University of Sydney Business School Associate Professor Sandra Peter is
Speaker 2: with us to take us through the impact of.
Speaker 1: These emerging technologies.
Speaker 2: Sandra, you've recently written about open aiy's latest update. Can
Speaker 2: you explain what's happening here with these Studio Ghibli style images?
Speaker 3: So Open Eye's latest update to chat jipt was a
Speaker 3: significantly improved image generation capability. This means that it allowed
Speaker 3: users to create like really convincing images in the style
Speaker 3: off And everyone's been trying out the Ghibli style because
Speaker 3: it's been one of those very very clearly identifiable styles,
Speaker 3: and it was also used by some altmann to tell
Speaker 3: people about this thing, and it's been really enormously popular,
Speaker 3: so much so that basically their systems have crashed since
Speaker 3: they've released it. And I think it was about another
Speaker 3: ten million people that have joined the open aies efforts
Speaker 3: based on this new image generation model.
Speaker 1: And so how is this possible?
Speaker 2: Has openaiy just scraped all two dozen Ghibli movies in
Speaker 2: order to replicate this style.
Speaker 3: They haven't. They've scraped the Internet, and the internet has
Speaker 3: a lot of things on the internet, and we can
Speaker 3: talk about what goes into training some of these models,
Speaker 3: but the idea with Generative AI is that they've changed
Speaker 3: the way that they create these images. So they've kind
Speaker 3: of moved from the traditional what we call diffusion models,
Speaker 3: where we have models that gradually refine just noisy data
Speaker 3: into something called autoregressive algorithms. And no one wants to
Speaker 3: go into the details of that. All you need to
Speaker 3: know about is is that basically it treats images like language.
Speaker 3: So Chagipiti now predicts words in a sentence, but it
Speaker 3: can also predict visual elements in an image. This means
Speaker 3: that you can basically use all the things that jipt
Speaker 3: has learned about Ghibli style, for instance, the fact that
Speaker 3: it's got things like soft pastels, it's a Japanese type animation,
Speaker 3: and so on, and it can use those to more
Speaker 3: accurately create these images from precise prompts that people give it.
Speaker 2: What are the copyright implications here of this happening.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's a lot of copyright images. And can I
Speaker 3: actual say when it comes to generative AI, this comes
Speaker 3: on top of many other controversies that we've had. But
Speaker 3: the ability to work with styles, and when I say styles,
Speaker 3: I don't just mean the Ghibli style. Everything becomes a
Speaker 3: style for generative AI. That means things like bananas or cats,
Speaker 3: or bloody corporate emails, they all become styles. The ability
Speaker 3: to work with these styles it becomes the heart of
Speaker 3: this controversy because for many artists, like our distinctive approaches
Speaker 3: to how we create art is not a style. That
Speaker 3: can be applied in a specific prompt. However, the traditionally
Speaker 3: the copyright law doesn't protect styles, only very specific expressions
Speaker 3: because we don't want to stifle creative expression. Right if
Speaker 3: you could copyright things like impressionism, that would limit what
Speaker 3: people can do. But there's a very clear difference between
Speaker 3: a general style and then the highly distinctive style that
Speaker 3: a person might have. If you remember a while back,
Speaker 3: there was a guy called Greg Rutowski. This was a
Speaker 3: Polish artist, and people were using his style over and
Speaker 3: over again to generate images on unstable diffusion. Now, if
Speaker 3: you try to do them in the style of Greg,
Speaker 3: this threatening sposed his livelihood and his craft. So creators
Speaker 3: have taken legal action against this on a number of fronts.
Speaker 4: The newest trend is to create studio I say create
Speaker 4: is to imitate Studio ghibli images truly just coming for
Speaker 4: one of our most beloved examples of human manual creativity.
Speaker 4: Everyone loves studio Ghibili because it's beautiful and also because
Speaker 4: it's painstakingly created by humans who love art. And now
Speaker 4: to actually bt is trying to imitate that and creating
Speaker 4: images that are just worse. They're just soul less versions
Speaker 4: of Studio Ghibli. It's also worth noting that Miyazaki, the
Speaker 4: mastermind behind Studio Ghibli, he once said of AI, I
Speaker 4: would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work
Speaker 4: at all, and once when he was presented with an
Speaker 4: example of how AI could be applied to his work,
Speaker 4: he saw the footage and said quote, I strongly feel
Speaker 4: that this is an insult to life itself.
Speaker 2: It emerged a few months ago that allegedly Meta CEO
Speaker 2: Mark Zuckerberg approved of his company using pirated versions of
Speaker 2: copyright protected books illegally uploaded to sites like libjen to
Speaker 2: try its AI software. If true, it seems like it
Speaker 2: might be breaching all sorts of laws, I suppose, But
Speaker 2: is there actually anything that can be done about it.
Speaker 3: This is one of those huge, if true, kind of things,
Speaker 3: and also something that is still being debated and contested.
Speaker 3: There is a good likelihood that things like libjan were
Speaker 3: ingested to train these models. We don't know at what
Speaker 3: stages and at what scale. It's also true that when
Speaker 3: we ingest what is commonly known as the Internet, we
Speaker 3: will end up ingesting things that have copyright that we
Speaker 3: don't necessarily think of being ingested. I think an easier
Speaker 3: way to think about that might be the controversy around
Speaker 3: generative AI models being able to write really really good
Speaker 3: dialogue for movies because they've ingested OpenSubtitles dot org, which
Speaker 3: has pirated subtitles for all the movies in all the languages,
Speaker 3: and even though it wasn't trained on actual movies and
Speaker 3: on movie script ingesting the pirated subtitles means that it's
Speaker 3: now very good at doing this. Yes, things can be done.
Speaker 1: The law will.
Speaker 3: Evolve much as the technology has, except that technology moves
Speaker 3: a lot faster than the law. But there's a lot
Speaker 3: of work on the way on new legislation to try
Speaker 3: to balance the fact that we need an enormous amount
Speaker 3: of data to create these models. We're protecting things like artists'
Speaker 3: identities and their creative work. And it's obviously not just
Speaker 3: studio Ghibili right. There's same concerns in written text in music.
Speaker 3: I've had Billie Eilish and Pearl Jam voicing concerns about
Speaker 3: generative AI in music. So this is very widespread and
Speaker 3: something that is being debated around the world now. The
Speaker 3: question of how we'll be able to kind of balance
Speaker 3: the fact that we do need a lot of data
Speaker 3: and there is scarcity in data, the fact that this
Speaker 3: legislation is has there are varied approaches around the globe.
Speaker 3: There have been caused in the US to allow companies
Speaker 3: to use copyrighted information to this go away for the
Speaker 3: company's training generative model. That we have an AI race,
Speaker 3: this is all this, this will all have to be
Speaker 3: worked out in the next couple of years.
Speaker 2: We've also recently seen the YouTube channel screen Culture demonetized.
Speaker 2: You may have seen some of their AI generated trailers
Speaker 2: that they make look like the real thing.
Speaker 1: How advanced is AI getting.
Speaker 2: Are we going to be able to tell the reels
Speaker 2: from the fakes in a few years time, And what
Speaker 2: does that mean for film studios and the like.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a complex question. Let me let me,
Speaker 3: let me, let me take a step back and talk
Speaker 3: about the bigger picture. This is this is an arms race,
Speaker 3: and at the moment we're not really winning it. In
Speaker 3: that we are able to create very very good fakes,
Speaker 3: deep fakes, and any type of content that is indistinguishable
Speaker 3: from the real thing. We were already able to do
Speaker 3: this really quite well with images a few years ago.
Speaker 3: We are now increasingly good at doing it with a
Speaker 3: voice with audio, we are increasingly good at doing it
Speaker 3: with video. I think the thing to focus on here
Speaker 3: is first that most of the generators, that all of
Speaker 3: the generators that are out there online cannot reliably tell
Speaker 3: you if a work is AI generated or not. If
Speaker 3: you remember the Pope in a white Valenciaga jacket controversy,
Speaker 3: it's been an arms race since, and that most of
Speaker 3: us can create convincing content using over the counter, commercially
Speaker 3: available software. So if you were trying to create a
Speaker 3: deep fake of my voice, it would likely cost you
Speaker 3: two dollars a month with commercially available software, and it
Speaker 3: would be a fantastic clone of my voice that can
Speaker 3: fool my mom. If you were looking to create video,
Speaker 3: you'd probably need a minute and a half of video
Speaker 3: of me in the public domain to create deep fakes
Speaker 3: of me. So it is an arms race, and you
Speaker 3: know we're not good at telling these things apart.
Speaker 1: And it's not just movies.
Speaker 2: Recently I saw global fashion giant H and M announced
Speaker 2: plans to use AI by making digital twins of thirty
Speaker 2: of its models. Now the company has said that the
Speaker 2: models would own the rights to their likeness. But this
Speaker 2: is something that's been worrying the fashion industry insiders for
Speaker 2: some time. Does there need to be better regulations in
Speaker 2: place before companies start to innovate and use AI in
Speaker 2: this way?
Speaker 3: Obviously there needs to be better regulation in this space,
Speaker 3: but I think first it will be down to companies
Speaker 3: to figure out how they want to use these technologies ethically.
Speaker 3: Technology always evolves faster than the law, so the work
Speaker 3: in the legal space will take some time. So I
Speaker 3: think it's really really important for executives, for leaders in
Speaker 3: this space to upscale themselves around artificial intelligence, to understand
Speaker 3: what the ethical challenges are, what the practical challenges are,
Speaker 3: but also what some of the huge opportunities are in
Speaker 3: that space, and to make informed choices about what they
Speaker 3: do in their organizations. This has been a long time coming, right.
Speaker 3: We've had digital humans like like Little Mikaela back in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen. They were on Instagram, then they became you know,
Speaker 3: digital flesh and blood. They did ads for things like
Speaker 3: I think it was Prada back in the day and
Speaker 3: bal Main. We had them evolve music careers on Spotify.
Speaker 3: So this is not new, but it's up to companies
Speaker 3: in the first instance, to really figure out how they
Speaker 3: want to do this the right way, and also a
Speaker 3: huge opportunity for companies to lead in an ethical way
Speaker 3: in that space.
Speaker 5: One of the most iconic brands bringing in the holiday season,
Speaker 5: but take a closer look at the new Coca Cola
Speaker 5: commercial and you might notice that it was made with
Speaker 5: artificial intelligence. Social media is certainly caught with it shows
Speaker 5: how lifeless that Christmas commercial is. Book A Colloges put
Speaker 5: out an ad and ruin Christmas and their entire brand.
Speaker 3: It's less festive, more creepy holiday vibes. We's push for
Speaker 3: marketing efficiency, right, how do we create more with less?
Speaker 1: That's just a sort of business one on one.
Speaker 2: I've also seen, you know, entire ad campaigns generated by
Speaker 2: using AI. Campaigns that would usually require entire teams, days
Speaker 2: of shoots, makeup artists, stylists, lighting technicians, directors, photographers all
Speaker 2: replaced by just typing words into this kind of generator.
Speaker 1: There's something sad about that, isn't there.
Speaker 3: Well, there's something sad about the volume that we can
Speaker 3: make in this space. There again, opportunities in that space
Speaker 3: as well. If you think about the kind of a
Speaker 3: deep fake of me. We're not using it obviously to
Speaker 3: create videos of me, but if we need to do
Speaker 3: a little pick up, it might be easier to do
Speaker 3: it with a typing word in rather than booking the
Speaker 3: whole studio and everything else again and disrupt everybody's day.
Speaker 3: So there are opportunities in that space, but there's also
Speaker 3: a real danger that we might be just rehashing, recombining
Speaker 3: all things and not giving artists, creators, directors, producers, writers
Speaker 3: the opportunity to really bring our humanity to this. I
Speaker 3: think the useful way to think about AI is as
Speaker 3: an assistant. This is not a technology that should come
Speaker 3: to replace what we do. It's not there to take
Speaker 3: our jobs, but it's there to enhance us. So I
Speaker 3: would encourage people to think about what they can do
Speaker 3: with AI that we weren't able to do before, and
Speaker 3: think of it as adding to our capabilities rather than
Speaker 3: replacing us. There will be disruption, and I think all
Speaker 3: of us, all of us know that that will happen.
Speaker 3: I always say it's not coming for your job, but
Speaker 3: it's definitely coming for your job description. But it's an
Speaker 3: important moment, I think for especially people who lead businesses
Speaker 3: lead creative things to upscale themselves on what this technology is.
Speaker 3: I would, of course say the University of Sydney had
Speaker 3: does the best work around the effluency anywhere in the world.
Speaker 3: So do come and do this with us, but find
Speaker 3: find ways to understand what this technology can do. It's
Speaker 3: really quite different to what we've been able to do before.
Speaker 3: Even the idea of style engines. It's not intuitive to
Speaker 3: us to think that, you know, things like bananas or
Speaker 3: corporate emos become styles. Catness is a style, right, So
Speaker 3: try to understand what the tech can do and then
Speaker 3: really be very mindful and very deliberate in how you
Speaker 3: implement it in your organization. I think it's up to
Speaker 3: people who lead, whether it's the creative industries or whether
Speaker 3: it's any business or government, to lead the way on
Speaker 3: how we think we ethically want to be doing this.
Speaker 3: It's not happening to us. We are making this future
Speaker 3: happen and the next two years will be crucial.
Speaker 2: Are there any protections that you'd like to see in
Speaker 2: place in order to better protect the creative industries? Because
Speaker 2: I think that there is, given how fast the technology
Speaker 2: is evolving, there is a fear that it could stifle
Speaker 2: that creative production and that creative process.
Speaker 3: I'm not a lawyer, so I live the I leave
Speaker 3: the lawmaking and the details of this to those who
Speaker 3: who know better. But I would want to see protections
Speaker 3: around artists, right. I do want to see protections around
Speaker 3: how their work is being used to train these models,
Speaker 3: because I think at the moment it's a bit of
Speaker 3: the wild West out there, and I am worried that
Speaker 3: AI generated content might end up in the long term
Speaker 3: severely diluting the earnings for original creators, which also means
Speaker 3: that fewer people will want to join the creative art
Speaker 3: So ultimately, I think owners consent in using any of
Speaker 3: this should be should be a requirement.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Sandra, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 2: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 2: at enziherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
Speaker 2: produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is also
Speaker 2: a sound engineer.
Speaker 1: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 2: Subscribe to the Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts, and tune in on Monday for another
Speaker 2: look behind the headlines.