Accessibility

Arlo was about to graduate with a degree in lighting design. During his last semester, his professor introduced him to a new tool that integrates AI in the lighting design process. The course was focused on how new technologies like creative AI tools could make the leading design process more efficient and intuitive.

Despite his enthusiasm, Arlo didn't have the money to access these tools. He went to school in a remote location, and they didn’t have the funding to grant all students with emerging technologies. Many students paid for these new tools, but Arlo would only have limited access to the free features they offered.

Arlo fell behind pretty quickly. He watched a handful of his classmates make quick advancements on their projects using AI tools while he manually created his designs. Arlo's experience resembled some of the findings that studies had found about unequal access to new technologies, and they needed to democratize the tools.

He wanted to know if his friends had this accessibility problem, so he asked his classmates and friends who go to other schools. Those he surveyed described a wide range of experiences. Some had full access to the latest AI tools because their families paid for it or they were able to use scholarships. Others, like Arlo, could only access basic versions. He also learned about open-source alternatives and some who pool their resources to share access to paid tools.

Arlo asked his professor if they could create a "tool-sharing" program within the department, where students booked time slots to use the AI software in their computer labs. He also suggested they approach the companies that created these tools to offer student discounts. His professor was receptive to the ideas and collaborated as a class to implement the tool-sharing program. They contacted several AI companies about educational partnerships, both of which began to level the playing field for students like Arlo.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • What are the potential benefits and challenges of using AI in lighting design?
  • What are the implications of unequal access to AI resources for students in different educational institutions and on students' careers in creative industries?
  • What innovations or changes would you like to see in the field of AI to make it more beneficial and accessible for lighting designers?
  • How might access to AI tools impact the overall educational outcomes for students in creative fields?
  • What steps can be taken to ensure equitable access to AI tools in creative fields like lighting design?
  • What role can creative communities play in supporting equitable access to AI tools in creative fields?
  • How can collaboration between artists, technologists, and educators improve the development and use of AI in creative fields?
  • What interdisciplinary approaches can be taken to ensure that AI tools are designed and used in ways that are inclusive and equitable?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

  • Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, by Sasha Costanza-Chock (2020)

Informed Consent

Dance is Mila's life. As a third-year college student, she has been looking for ways to create more innovative projects that allow her to create choreography in a new way. For this, she has turned to AI. She has been eager to push the boundaries of Dance, so she uses a motion capture technology that records her every movement and then sends the data to an AI system that turns each of those moves into a new sequence. Her classmates are impressed that these new sequences seem to capture human emotion along with precise steps.

Mila soon encountered a complex issue many people in creative fields face. When she shared her performance online, another dancer contacted her and highlighted that some of the new dance moves were the same as those she had created years before. This made her consider issues around consent that Mila had not yet considered.

Mila reached out to the developers of the AI choreography tool. They were open about their data collection methods and training process, and they explained that their AI was trained on a vast dataset of publicly available dance videos. However, they hadn't sought explicit permission from the dancers featured in those videos. The developers pointed out that this approach is similar to human dancers learning from others by watching dances and gaining inspiration. They also acknowledged that they were working on developing a way for dancers to opt out of having their work used in AI training.

Mila then conducted a small survey among her fellow dance students and local professional dancers. She asked them to weigh in on whether they would be willing to contribute their work to AI training datasets if asked. They provided a range of responses: some saw it as a form of artistic legacy and seemed excited about the possibility of their moves influencing AI-generated choreography. In contrast, others were concerned that they would lose control over their creative work and thought this would lead to AI replicating and building on their style without giving them credit. A few dancers proposed a system where dancers could opt in to license their dance moves and earn royalties.

Her story underscores the ethical issues that lie at the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence. The AI tool had been fed an enormous amount of online content, including the works of other artists who had not consented to this. This elevates the issue of intellectual property rights at a time when AI has created artwork in every discipline and when it becomes difficult to see the difference between inspiration and infringement.

This became an important moment of learning for Mila. She began researching AI-generated copyright laws and learned the importance of ensuring that companies get consent from creators before their AI systems generate new works.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • What are the drawbacks and benefits of using AI to generate dance choreography?
  • How does the issue of consent factor into AI systems use publicly available online content?
  • Why is it important to have informed consent when using AI tools that draw on public or personal data?
  • How can designers, artists, and writers obtain proper consent and participation from other creators when using AI-generated content?
  • How could dance generated by AI impact human emotion and expression in performance art?
  • What, if any, future implications could there be for dance and other performance arts with the rise of AI?
  • Should dance students learn new skills or gain new knowledge to ensure they address the associated ethical concerns?
  • Will the future of performing arts look very different due to AI?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

Employment

Jona had a critical moment in one of her first web design classes in college. Her professor demoed a new creative AI tool that can generate a wide range of dynamic web layouts for websites in just a few seconds. She and her classmates were amazed when they saw how the tool worked and what it could quickly produce. After the demo, when they were discussing the tool, she went from being excited by the possibility of speeding up how she designs websites to being worried by a tool that was doing what she was still only learning to do. As one of her classmates asked, “Why will a client hire us if this AI tool can already make a website?”

After class, Jona found some articles that explained the impact of AI on employment for designers, artists, and those in other creative industries like web design. The articles highlighted the potential for AI as a tool to help humans handle mundane tasks and, therefore, become more creative. They claimed that this would help designers like her focus on the innovative aspects of their projects but that it would also likely result in there being less need for designers.

Jona also contacted alumni from her program who work as local web designers to learn how AI tools affect them. The senior start-up designer shared that AI tools had created new roles in her company. She described positions for designers who translate client needs into AI prompts and refine AI-generated designs. Another alumnus who works freelance explained how he used AI to handle basic design tasks, which allowed him to take on more clients and focus on more high-level creative direction. A third web designer pointed towards the shrinking job market for entry-level designers and highlighted that some tasks traditionally assigned to junior designers are becoming automated.

These conversations inspired Jona to expand the scope of the website she was building for the semester. The website showcased potential career pathways that might emerge as these creative AI tools expand. For example, she imagined roles like an "Ethical AI Design Consultant" who is responsible for ensuring AI-generated designs adhere to cultural sensitivities and accessibility standards and a "Design Dataset Curator" who is tasked with compiling and maintaining high-quality design databases for training AI models. Jona also explored the role of designers who would add the final, uniquely human elements to AI-generated designs, ensuring each project maintained human qualities. She called this role the "Human Touch Specialist."

Instead of shying away from the topic, Jona focused her entire semester project on these contrasting issues. She created a website that illustrates what a day in the life of a web designer would look like in the future. The main character in her story used AI to speed up the process of doing design tasks. Still, it relied on their individual intuition and their unique emotional intelligence to create designs that resonated with clients in a more personal way.

She presented her project during the final class and referred to some articles she read, including a TED talk by an AI researcher who promoted deeper collaborations between humans and AI. She ended her talk by reflecting on the importance of human creativity. She also suggested ways that AI may change the essence of art and design processes and humans' ability to evoke emotional connections.

Jona's project led to a dynamic class discussion about what their profession would look like in the future, where AI is used in every creative discipline. Her peers discussed how they might leverage AI tools and how AI tools may threaten what they conceive as the web design field. Jona came to believe that her employability lies in her ability to remain flexible and embrace emerging technologies while offering her unique human perspective, empathy, and emotional intelligence in every project.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • What are the possible benefits and drawbacks of using AI to create website and mobile layouts, and graphics?
  • How can web designers utilize AI tools while also creating designs that emotionally connect with their clients?
  • What basic tasks can AI do for web designers and other creatives in order to free them to take on more innovative parts of their projects?
  • What are the risks and benefits to the design field as AI continues to become more powerful?
  • Can human creativity play a role in the future of web design and other creative fields that use AI?
  • What skills do web design students and other creatives need in order to thrive in a field that includes AI?
  • What changes are needed for AI to benefit web designers and fields of other creatives?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

Responsible Development

Amari studies product design as a second-year student at her local college and is known for experimenting with new technologies. One afternoon, while in the fabrication lab, she watched one of her new classmates demo a just-released AI tool. Amari wanted to give it a try, too. 

She was impressed by the AI tool and the designs it produced on a project to redesign a reusable water bottle. However, when she presented some of those renderings in her class, her professor questioned whether she was demonstrating her full potential using the AI tool. They all debated about what makes the work creative, especially when AI was used in the process. Amari began doubting that she could be creative when heavily relying on the tools. She wanted to keep her voice as a designer and wasn't sure she wanted to compromise her creative point of view just to speed up her process. She also learned that creative AI technologies require careful consideration to avoid potential harm. The cautious development of creative AI tools could ensure the technology is used more responsibly.

As Amari continued her exploration of responsible AI development, she stumbled upon an intriguing project at a nearby tech incubator. The project focused on creating AI tools that adapted to individual artists' styles and preferences over time. Amari was fascinated by the idea and was invited to join a beta test of their tool after reaching out to the incubator. She used the adaptive AI tool alongside her traditional methods for a month. She kept a journal to reflect on her experiences. She found that the tool did seem to evolve with her and her unique style. Amari began to believe the creative industry could balance innovation with ethical considerations and minimize unintended consequences.

Amari considered new possibilities for responsible AI development in creative fields like product design. Could creative AI tools be customized not just to individual artists but to specific projects or even a specific mood? Could they serve as a bridge between different artistic disciplines in ways that help creative individuals explore unfamiliar territories? At the same time, Amari remained mindful of the need for transparency in AI-assisted work.

Her research into the intersection of AI and creativity led her to think of AI tools as collaborative partners rather than tools that would produce final solutions. For her final project, she decided to use texture graphics that her AI tool generated and place that graphic over a 3D model of a water bottle that she designed. She felt like this was a creative synthesis of human-machine collaboration.

Amari's project attracted attention at a student exhibition, and her classmates continued to discuss her use of AI in her design process. The continued interest in Amari's project led her to start an Instagram account that combined creative AI and product design. She and some of her classmates showcase their projects and others that blended AI and product design. This deepened Amari's understanding of how creative AI tools are developed and their potential (and limitations). It also helped her develop a more critical mindset when using these new technologies.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • How can AI tools enhance the creative process in product design?
  • What unique ideas did AI generate for Amari's sustainable water bottle project that may not have been conceived through traditional methods?
  • How can designers ensure that their personal voice is maintained in AI-assisted projects?
  • In what ways can AI-generated insights be integrated with personal aesthetics and environmental considerations in design?
  • What ethical considerations arise from using AI in product design projects?
  • How does the use of AI in design impact traditional skill development and the originality of the work produced?
  • How do you envision the future relationship between AI and product design evolving?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

Sustainability

Frances attends a small local college and will graduate this year from a program called Creative Coding. She looks for ways to reduce her environmental footprint but is unsure how to deal with the rapid advances of generative AI. On the one hand, she's fascinated by all the new tools that have been emerging and wants to create digital art using platforms she sees her friends using, which can transform a simple sentence into a stunning visual and even generate the code for a new app. However, her excitement was diminished by a guest lecturer in one of her environmental science classes. The lecturer discussed the hidden environmental cost of some AI tools and highlighted the substantial energy consumption and carbon emissions associated with training and running AI models. 

Frances realized she might need to revisit her plans to incorporate AI tools into her projects. She wanted to learn more, so she explored the assertion that one image generated by an AI tool could require a lot of computational power. This power is generated in large data centers that need vast amounts of nonrenewable energy, electricity, and water to cool them down.

As she looked into it further, Frances became more familiar with the ongoing debate within the tech and creative communities. Some people think that AI's current environmental cost is justified by its potential to solve complex problems and even address climate change. “AI-driven innovations in renewable energy, smart grid systems, and climate modeling are examples of how AI could ultimately lead to a more sustainable future,” one person argued. “Short-term environmental impact of AI development,” another claimed, “was a necessary investment for long-term global sustainability.”

Frances wanted to hear from people in her local community, so she organized a panel discussion at her school. She invited professors who research AI, environmental science, and sustainable technology. The AI expert said the focus on AI's energy consumption was misplaced since it is still a tiny percentage of global energy used, compared to industries like transportation or manufacturing. The environmental scientist countered that the rapid growth of AI made it necessary to intervene before the environmental impact was too significant to manage. The sustainable technologist suggested that AI might optimize its energy consumption to make it an automated and sustainable technology. This nuanced debate left Frances with a deep appreciation for the subtleties of balancing technological progress with environmental responsibility.

She wondered what she and others could do to use this powerful technology sustainably and began looking for examples of AI models trained on renewable energy. She joined forums where creative communities shared tips to reduce the environmental impact of their work, looked into using more energy-efficient hardware, and signed up for services that run on renewable energy, among other ways of reducing the carbon footprint.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • How can AI tools like Midjourney and DALL-E enhance the creative process for digital artists like Isa?
  • How does the energy consumption of AI data centers contribute to carbon emissions and climate change?
  • How can digital artists balance their passion for creating AI-generated art with the need to minimize their environmental footprint?
  • What sustainable practices can artists adopt to reduce the environmental impact of their AI-generated creations?
  • What steps can the tech industry take to ensure that AI development is more sustainable?
  • How do you envision the future relationship between AI and digital art evolving in terms of sustainability?
  • What innovations or changes would you like to see in the field of AI to make it more environmentally friendly?
  • What interdisciplinary approaches can be taken to ensure that AI tools are designed and used in ways that respect and protect the environment?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

Impact on Society

Writing always came easy to Riley, who is now a second-year student majoring in screenwriting. They came to college because they dreamed of writing a script to captivate audiences, but that pressure occasionally led to writer's block. One night, when Riley was experiencing writer's block, they found a new tool powered by AI that promised to generate storylines like Shakespeare. Riley was intrigued, and they began experimenting with this new app. They put in a plot point that was a half-baked idea, and then the tool transformed that plot point into a long, flowery narrative with impressive characters and even a couple of twists.

Riley was shocked by this. While they were impressed by the AI tool's ability to produce a lot of text, they had a lot of ethical questions about what it means for an app to produce such extensive writing so quickly. And Riley's mine, there are a lot of social implications that she wanted answers to. One issue was the authenticity of the work produced. Riley wondered, "If the AI is generating the core of my story, can I truly consider them my own?" This dilemma reflected concern about copyright protection in the age of AI, topics thoroughly discussed in a range of articles that Riley had found, where the blurring of lines between human and machine-generated content raised essential questions about authorship and creative rights.

Riley also noticed potential biases in the AI's narratives, which made her curious about the references the AI used to produce the narrative. They were burdened by this new responsibility to evaluate whether the text produced by the AI system was 100% accurate and didn't negatively affect society.

Riley began researching the role that creative AI tools’ have in shaping narratives in society. One debate they found include comments from those who believe that stories generated by creative AI tools could be a positive force which include with diverse and inclusive narratives. These individuals believed AI could be a positive and that they can reduce stereotypes while introducing important new perspectives. 

Others in the debate warned against allowing creative AI tools to influence societal values. They argued that these tools lack the kind of real experiences necessary to improve society, and they actuallly might create unrealistic expectations about how humans relate with one another. One person pointed out that creative AI tools could perpetuate harmful stereotypes and even suggested they could help to upend societal structures.

Many of Riley's classmates were also beginning to notice these new AI tools, and it became a point of discussion in one of her screenwriting classes. When discussing their future profession if creative AI tools are dominant, Riley also considered a world where AI might even overshadow their creativity.

Riley is not sure how to reconcile all of these conflicting thoughts. They realized that using AI tools to break through creative blocks wasn't only necessary. Still, it was additionally essential to map out their ethical landscape by the importance of being authentic and original, avoiding biases in the text, And making sure that her profession includes humans in the future, not just AI tools.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • How can AI tools enrich the creative process for screenwriters?
  • What are the problems in using AI if it's good at generating storylines and characters?
  • Who is the author of a screenplay that is mostly written by AI: the human writer, the AI, or both?
  • What ethical issues arise when using AI in creative writing?
  • How can writers assess and figure out if an AI output adds to or hurts culture and society?
  • What specific skills do writers and screenwriters need to address the potential ethical concerns of AI
  • How should writers, technologists, and ethicists work together to improve how AI is developed for screenwriting?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

  • Frontier AI Ethics, by Seth Lazar (2024)
  • Shifting AI controversies: How do we get from the AI controversies we have to the controversies we need?, Shaping AI (2023)
  • Designing Neural Media, by K Allado-McDowell (2023)
  • Communication, by Finn Brunton, Mercedes Bunz, Paula Bialski (2018)
  • Race After Technology, by Ruha Benjamin (2019)
  • Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence, by Kate Crawford (2021)
  • Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need, by Sasha Costanza-Chock (2020)
  • Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, by Virginia Eubanks (2018)
  • Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI, by Ayanna Howard (2019)
  • Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, by Safiya Umoja Noble (2018)
  • Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy, by Cathy O'Neil (2016)
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
  • Coded Bias, by Joy Buolamwini (2020)

Cultural Appropriation

Ali has been making clothes since she was a kid. Now, she’s a graduate student at the best fashion design school in the country, where she has been experimenting with how to incorporate AI into making a new clothing line. She draws from cultures around the world and wants to create a collection that genuinely represents all cultures and respects all body types. Her professors tell her that it's impossible, but she persists. Ali programmed her AI tool to include many data sets representing traditional garments and patterns and a broad range of fashion history.

When Ali’s AI tool began generating design renderings, she was initially impressed by the range of patterns and styles. However, one of her close friends in the program pointed out that some of the renderings looked similar to garments that some consider sacred. They represented cultures that Ali knew little about and was not represented by.

Her critique sparked an inquiry about cultural appropriation in her collection and in AI-generated art. She quickly realized that the model she trained needed to include the kind of nuanced understanding of different cultures and symbolism that those cultures would not want to reproduce. In her research, she read articles about cultural appropriation in fashion and academic papers, such as those about digital cultural heritage, hoping to find insights to help navigate the ethics of these issues.

Ali also reached out to a few friends in her program. A casual afternoon coffee conversation became a disagreement about the benefits and pitfalls of representing cultures with AI tools in the fashion industry. One friend said that AI’s ability to process large amounts of data might create more authentic and respectful cultural fusions. “AI tools could break cultural barriers through fashion,” she said. Another friend argued that algorithms could not fully capture all of the nuances contained in culture and mentioned that AI-generated designs might trivialize cultural symbols and elements.

Ali organized a panel of experts to discuss this. It took place at her school, and three experts debated the issue: a fashion designer, a cultural anthropologist, and a professor who teaches AI ethics. The discussion revealed the complexity of the issue. While one of the panelists mentioned that human designers struggled with cultural appropriation and questioned whether an AI tool could be programmed with more comprehensive cultural knowledge than a human, another pointed out that simply feeding cultural designs into an AI tool required separating the designs from their cultural context and was, therefore, a form of appropriation. Ali was left with a deeper appreciation for her responsibility as a fashion designer.

Ali revised the tool to include specific ways of filtering out imagery that might be culturally sensitive but couldn’t fully address some of the issues the panelists brought up. The experience made her consider the importance of being culturally aware as she designed, but she remained frustrated by the process.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • How can the creative process in fashion design be enhanced by AI tools?
  • What kind of problems can emerge when clothes are designed by AI tools?
  • How can AI-generated fashion designs cause cultural appropriation?
  • What can designers do to gaurantee their work accurately represents the specific cultures they draw inspiration from?
  • Why is it so important for AI tools used by the fashion industry to understand the culture of the designs it produces?
  • How can AI filters prevent cultural insensitivity in the designs they output?
  • What should the fashion industry do to ensure that AI designs are culturally accurate?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

Bias & Representation

Devon arrived at college already having established a photography business. He took photographs of weddings, graduation ceremonies, and even his friend's band. So, when he arrived in college, he knew exactly how he wanted to further his photography career. However, in his second-year photography studio course, his professor introduced them to an AI program that could generate photographs based simply on a short text description. Devon has always been interested in how photography and tech intersect and was eager to try out this new way of expanding his creativity.

Devon signed up for a pro account on the AI tool and spent long hours generating photographs based on the themes he was working on in his course. He was initially wowed by what the program was producing. Each one was a slight variation on his theme, and he could produce variations on those variations. It sparked his creativity and helped him generate ideas for future projects.

As his project advanced, he spotted reoccurring patterns in the images that were being produced. They didn't allow him to create the kind of diverse imagery he had in mind for his project, no matter how many times he changed his prompts. Also, the photos, especially those that included people in them, look like stereotypical caricatures that didn't provide a variety of races, genders, and backgrounds that were culturally distinct from each other. Devon aimed to demonstrate how rich human experiences could be, so this limitation was frustrating, and he couldn't figure out a way around it. For that reason, Devon began researching why the AI tool produced this kind of bias.

Devon also heard others debating this issue. Some argued that AI-generated images expose the inherent prejudices in our society and the art world. They saw this as an opportunity to spark meaningful discussion about these topics. Others pointed out that these biased tools inadvertently allow artists to perpetuate harmful stereotypes. This group advocated for boycotting AI tools until they could be more representative.

Devon contacted some photographers from often-underrepresented groups to learn their perspectives on how datasets are created and their feelings about how they were being represented, not represented, and misrepresented. Some were offended, while others wanted to use AI tools to create fantastical and non-realistic images that would, in effect, challenge the conventional notions of identity and representation. These conversations made Devon realize that the issue was far more complex than he initially thought, involving questions of artistic freedom, social responsibility, and the very nature of representation in art.

He found several helpful articles that reviewed how AI-generated content produces bias and diverse representation. At the core of this problem lies the fact that AI algorithms need to learn from image datasets that contain massive amounts of photographs that often represent only certain and often privileged groups in society. Devon learned even more about this on several podcasts focusing on AI's ethical implications in art. The fact that these data sets contained many more images from specific demographics led to the images being produced being an overrepresentation of those groups.

He was determined to focus on this issue. He experimented with different ways of generating images that reflected more balanced and diverse data sets, especially those representing a white spectrum of humanity.

Devon presented his final project at the end of this semester. It was unique among his classmates. It showed AI-augmented photographs and a written essay about the importance of adding more diversity to the datasets that are part of these AI tools. He hoped his classmates and other photographers would follow ethical standards as they produced photographs with AI tools.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • In what ways can an AI tool improve a photographer's creativity?
  • Are there any risks in using an AI tool to create a photo?
  • Why do we need to call out and eliminate the biases produced by AI-generated content?
  • How does dataset content that is used to train AI algorithms impact who becomes represented in the images that are generated?
  • How can the creative community ensure that the future of AI in art is diverse and inclusive?
  • What role can photographers and other creatives play in shaping how AI tools are ethically used in their fields?
  • What new skills should a photographer acquire to avoid producing new biases when they use an AI tool?
  • What did you learn from this scenario that you can apply to your process?

Incomplete list of resources that deal with bias

Transparency

Desi discovered an AI tool that can generate poetry while researching for her digital art class as a second-year student majoring in fine art; she also wants to find ways to incorporate her interest in poetry. When she found the AI tool, she was transfixed by the possibility of collaborating with a nonhuman to push herself as a creator and writer. She was impressed with how it expanded her vocabulary and ways of thinking about the world; both made her feel more creative and gave her new ideas for projects that she imagined were far outside her ability.

Desi began experimenting wildly and produced a new range of poems in partnership with her AI tool. When her university held a creative writing showcase, she submitted several pieces for the juried show. Jury members caught wind of the fact that she was collaborating with an AI tool, and they, along with her classmates and her writing professor, began to debate whether or not she was the real author of these pieces. Did she deserve the credit, or did the AI tool that she used? Or was this a collaboration? These lines were very blurry, and nobody had a clear answer about who the real author was.

This question of who created the poetry became even more problematic when Desi did more research and learned that the tool was trained, using large amounts of poetry from creators who did not consent to using their works. Additionally, many poems the AI tool was trained on were copyrighted.

Desi came across a heated online debate between other poets on the topic of AI-assisted writing. Some argued that using AI without disclosure was artistic deception. “The value of my poems lay not just in the final piece, but in my experiences and the struggles that led me to shape it,” one person commented. Others suggested that AI is simply a new tool, like a thesaurus or rhyming dictionary, and artists play the role of curators who refine the AI's output. This second group didn’t see any need to disclose that their final poem was created, in part, by an AI tool. It stands on its own merits, regardless of the tools used to make it.

Desi was torn between these perspectives. She decided to experiment with different levels of transparency in her work. She provided detailed breakdowns of specific lines that were AI-generated vs those that were her own. For other poems, she provided footnotes stating that AI was used in the general creative process. She did not mention AI involvement in a couple of other poems. She wondered how audiences would react to each approach.

When invited to publish her AI-assisted poems, she needed help navigating copyright laws, which traditionally didn't account for AI creators. Desi needed a new framework to recognize and compensate for digital contributions.

As part of the showcase, Desi participated in an open mic night. She read some of the poems she created with her AI tool and explained her process and how the poems were created with the help of AI. She received a spectrum of questions from listeners impressed by the results and others who felt like she had cheated. It convinced Desi that she needed to be transparent when using AI. Doing that ensures that she respects her audience and engages in deeper conversations about how creativity evolves with technology's help.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • Why is transparency important when presenting AI-assisted creative works?
  • Should the human writer or the AI tool be credited as the author of a poem that was created with a lot of AI help?
  • What ethical issues arise from using AI trained on existing poetry, especially works by marginalized voices?
  • How should writers, artists, or designers communicate to their audiences how they use AI in their work?
  • What kind of frameworks should be used to highlight and pay for the digital contributions to a work that was made with AI?
  • How can writers and artists like Desi balance how they use AI contributions to ensure that their work is original and authentic?
  • In what ways can creative individuals ensure that their unique voice is not overshadowed by contributions by AI?
  • Can you think of any ways to protect your creative integrity when you use AI?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic

  • The Artist in the Machine: The World of AI-Powered Creativity, by Arthur I. Miller (2019)
  • The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, by Marcus Du Sautoy (2019)
  • Computational Creativity: The Philosophy and Engineering of Autonomously Creative Systems, by Tony Veale and F. Amílcar Cardoso (2019)

Data Privacy

Cage, Schumann, Glass. Nando was obsessed with music and the history of music. When he went to study at a famous conservancy, he hoped to expand his horizons and build on the broad shoulders of many musicians he admired. So, he looked for ways to blend traditional composition with AI for his final junior year project. He had heard some of his classmates talk about AI tools, but he never looked into them himself. When he did his research, Nando found an AI tool that a musician could use to analyze their composition style and provide suggestions to create new melodies and harmonies that could accompany that composition. This he had to try!

The AI tool looks simple. He started by taking one of his recordings and uploading it to the platform. Within minutes, the platform offered Nando a range of samples that resonated with his musical taste. But it was long before he became concerned. A clause at the bottom of the page described their privacy and usage policy. He knew a little about AI and that it was built with data sets of music and samples from an extensive range of musical artists, but he then wondered whether or not the composition he just uploaded would also be used to create music for others.

Nando went back to the terms of service that he signed. Like many others, he didn't read what he signed up for, and he wondered, "What exactly did I sign up for? Could my compositions be used to help somebody else generate music or samples? It reminded him of a podcast he often listened to that featured an episode on digital ethics and mentioned how few of us know how our data will be used. He also remembered a story he heard from one of his classmates about how a song uploaded to one of these websites got leaked to the public. That could be his work! He became dubious of uploading anything else to the website.

As Nando continued to research the issue, he found musicians who actually embraced the idea of their music being used in AI training. They told him it was part of music’s evolution, similar to how jazz musicians would riff off each other during a set. They told him it’s a way of collaborating, pushing the boundaries of musical creation, and that it would probably lead to new genres of music. Some musicians even released a Creative Commons license that grants AI developers the freedom to use their compositions to train new AI tools. They believe this could democratize music creation and lead to more diverse and innovative compositions.

On the other hand, if everyone's music and data became part of a training set, would it lead to homogenized music? And would artists’ unique voices be lost in a blended sea of AI-generated music? He was also concerned that others might get access to his private data through his metadata. These questions added another layer of complexity to his already conflicted feelings about using the AI tool.

He talked with his friend about all this, someone who knows a lot about these AI systems. They explained that some of these music data sets only have musical samples from a small demographic of artists. His friend suggested that this makes it more likely that only a subset of musical history will go into generating AI-generated creations. That same friend pointed out that copyright is another issue he should consider. Nando wondered if he would violate copyright laws if the AI tool's music was based on protected music illegally uploaded to the data set. As someone who considers himself to be very private, he was concerned that this might expose his true identity. All these factors made him uneasy about continuing to use the tool, at least until he has more clarity on these issues.

What do you think?

Questions for Discussion

  • How do data privacy concerns impact artists using AI tools for creative projects?
  • How would you protect your data and intellectual property when using AI tools?
  • Can AI developers make sure that creative works are secure?
  • If a musical composition is influenced by suggestions from an AI tool, who should own the rights to that music?
  • How can creatives ensure that they comply with privacy regulations (like GDPR) when they use AI tools?
  • Can musicians make sure their use of AI to make music is ethical?

List of resources that, in part, focus on this topic