It seems like a weekly occurrence that I’m on the phone with legal and my production team to sort through the ins and outs of synthetic voice, text to speech, commercial use of generative music vs. licensed. Imagery is at least where we have for the most part clarity and consistency. Same goes for insights and privileged data and I remain highly vigilant of what we’re feeding into any public domain machines; ensuring everyone on the team, every contract with a vendor, creator, or influencer, abides by these standards.
This story in AdAge was talking about how increasingly, advertisers (clients) are placing more restrictions on their partners (agencies) when it comes to AI in their work but I’m not yet seeing the kind of consistent clarity coming from the client.
It’s more like a collaborative Whac-A-Mole game but endlessly fascinating. Every time we unearth a new understanding or scenario plan and play out implications, I sort of love that moment where we’re looking at each other, chuckling in awe that we’re getting a front row seat to this chapter.
Having had the benefit of navigating “Web 2.0” and “UGC” in the early 2000s, at what was then AOL Time Warner, today’s AI discussions are a lot like those we had about safe harbor, fair use; what constituted pastiche… I remember when “citizen journalists” would post content into an AIM community that we wanted to promote on the welcome page or sign-off screen and someone would catch an errant Coke can in the background… the swirl!
My friends at Viacom and MTV had it way worse and more often than we did but we all quickly adapted. Privacy policies, TOS, and guidelines would be drafted and edited into the site footers and contracts, and on we rolled until there weren’t so many things up for debate anymore. We got to move at the speed of Internet culture, making things faster, better, and very occasionally cheaper.
Whether it’s in the pages of the trades or in hallway conversations, when it comes to those brands and agencies (their creators and producers) experimenting with AI, I’m seeing plenty of lambasting and admonishing of those who mess up, but not enough material discussion.
It strikes me the only way we’ll manage around machine learning, is if we’re doing the human learning alongside it.
The fact that we’re all getting to experiment with generative stuff together, as agencies and creators, publishers, brands, and lawyers, gives me solace. Not only should we be talking with one another about what we learned when things went well — and being honest about what we learned when things went pear-shaped, we should be talking about implementing standards that serve us, collectively.
Much like how things like Creative Commons was born out of an open, collaborative Web, implemented and adhered to by (then) major platforms and players like Flickr et al., I hope we use this moment to develop the frameworks and principles together — as a community of people working in commercial creativity, where our work is mutually protected and valued.
