Op-Ed: From horrifying to ridiculous – AI images, biometrics, and some deadly legals

ChatGPT Gov — designed for use by the United States government — builds on an ‘enterprise’ version of the artificial intelligence tool used by businesses – Copyright AFP/File SEBASTIEN BOZON

There are two sides to humanity’s response to AI images. One is the terrified, and the other is the much less than impressed side.

I’m going to ask you to come over to the much less than impressed side.

Your response to AI initially depends on your profession, experience, and mindset. Most of the threat is suggestion. This is a button-pushing exercise. It’s unknown, therefore it’s threatening. Just list the possible threats, like copyright. Therefore it’s commercial clickbait.

Therefore it needs to be shut down. There’s a pretty low threshold from pure ignorance to a reassuring level of familiarity and contempt here.

Let’s try a simple deconstruction process.

From the general reaction, you’d think nobody had ever painted on a cave wall before.

You’re looking at a lot of familiar images in a slightly different context. They are the same images but made differently.

So what?

So you’re all having kittens for absolutely no reason, is what.

Movies, graphic novels, media publishing in general, you’re panicking at the shadows of things you do every day.

The tides of AI generated images can either be seen as a grim vista of intrusions on your life, or an irritating waste of time, and often quite ridiculous.

Look at the images.

Forget the AI.

You know how to make these images yourselves. The AI is using pretty much the same formulas to make them. From bland anime people to annoyingly cutesy animals or whatever, it’s no mystery to these images at all.

It’s no commercial threat, either. Images in the market are subject to very high turnover in commercial terms. An image grabs or it doesn’t. A herd of samey images usually doesn’t grab at all.

You still need standouts in the arts. You need that crucial differentiation from the herd. You need the rose among the lazy daisies on the wallpaper.

The commercial property environment hasn’t changed at all, either, and it’s much less romantic than just superficial imagery.

Fortunately, image copyright can be pretty simple. Copyright protection can be seeded liberally with customized pixel watermarks or other artefacts to preserve IP rights. You can copyright an image element by element, if you must.

In fact, this is the one area where you may well be looking at the wrong dangers. The other side of this issue is much more complex.

AI won’t put you out of business, but biometrics or similar characteristics might.

Remember deepfakes and their associated sleaze factors?

How about biometrics and biometric rights?

Add these two adorable things together. AI is perfectly capable of deliberately or unintentionally creating or recreating someone’s biometric identity.

This biometric identity is a unique personal property and directly related to personal rights. The biometrics are legally the person, in many ways.

See any legal risks?

Can your AI copy a person’s visual identity?

Can it be evidence against you if you infringe on someone’s biometrics?

Of course it can. It can compromise the identity of anyone on Earth.

It can expose anyone using AI to legal risks, too.

Deadly enough, do you think?

Art and life have a lot in common.