one month before, Genre-bending electronic musician FKA Twigs testify Before the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, requests policymakers to protect artists from being exploited by AI, from using their voices to create songs, from copying their likenesses to create pornography, or from scraping their body of work for training data.
I see A C-SPAN2 video A buttoned-up woman who, to my mind, is usually a goddess Down a pole into a golden-red underworld Impressive was the senators quietly watched as Twiggs, legal name Tahlia Debret Barnett, told them, “My art is the canvas on which I paint my identity and the sustainable basis of my livelihood.” Generative AI, he said, “threatens to rewrite and unravel the fabric of my existence.”
FKA Twigs isn’t the first artist to express fear, anger and a sense of urgency about the non-consensual use of her digital likeness. In early April, More than 200 musicians Signed an open letter issued by Artist Rights Alliance AI developers, tech companies and music services are being urged to pledge not to undermine or replace human artistry.
then OpenAI is a flirty release to the public his– Inspired voice assistant Sky called what sounded suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson — and ran Take it down After Johansson objected. The disaster demonstrates how blurred the boundaries of intellectual property can be, especially when it comes to one’s voice and the like. (Disclosure: Vox Media is one of several publishers that have signed a partnership agreement with OpenAI. Our reporting is editorially independent.)
My informal assessment of the vibe surrounding celebrities and generative AI: bad.
… but if you is A celebrity, working on your own clone?
After condemning the use of AI to misuse artists’ identities, FKA Twigs told senators that she spent the last year Train yourself to be a deepfake, which can mimic his personality and voice in multiple languages. “I will be employing my AI Twigs later this year to expand my reach and manage my online social media interactions,” he said, “while I continue to focus on my art from the comfort and convenience of my studio.”
“AI Twigs” was little more than a side note in the context of last month’s hearings, but I never stopped thinking about him. What it would mean if artists could harness the power of generative AI Offload friction work — content creation, press junkets, self-promotion — in their digital clones, leaving the human core free to invest earnestly in their creativity?
The difference between OpenAI’s Sky and AI Twigs is the “concept of consent,” Sarah Barrington, an engineer, AI researcher and deepfake detection expert at the UC Berkeley School of Information, told me. Twiggs agreed, while Johansson did not.
But even with enthusiastic consent, Barrington suspects it’s nearly impossible to maintain complete control over one’s digital likeness. The question then becomes whether understanding the marketing needs of the music industry well enough is worth making a deep dive into itself.
Can deepfakes save artists from TikTok? (Probably not.)
Being an artist is not what it used to be.
Musicians, writers and visual artists can no longer scrape by with talent, hard work and good looks alone. We live in the “personal brand” era, where most artists need to strategically build a lean, great, and above all consistent social media presence in order to get signed to a label.
Relentless self-marketing is best and time-consuming The worst is soul crushing. however much”POV: You’ve found your new favorite indie bandA musician is left to make a living from videos he makes, streaming and touring More challenging than ever.
Even when TikTok virality launches a band to a record deal, the demand for content creation remains constant, making it simply impossible for artists. Create a painting. Trends, Plan Beats, Films and Cobble video clips can take hours to put together. Even with a social media manager, the pressure to create content clutters up valuable brain space and turns every event into an opportunity. B-roll filming.
Outside of my job at Vox, I play bass in San Francisco Indie band. Music is a great love of mine, but it is my bandmate’s driving purpose and full-time job. He regularly posts self-promotional TikTok videos on behalf of the band, just like my favorite local artists desperately trying to grow an audience.
When I hear about AI Twigs, my mind immediately goes to the countless musicians who are cranking out videos for nothing. If they could all hire Deepfake to do this labor for them, they could put down their phones and write better music. We spend a lot of time thinking about how deepfakes can go wrong. AI Twigs made me think that, with strong enough rails, they could probably go the right.
Using generative AI to purposefully extend one’s reach is not unknown. Shamaine Daniels, Democratic candidate running in the primary for US House Pennsylvania District 10, used A generative AI phone banker named Ashley to reach out to voters ahead of an election this April. Unlike a human phone banker, Ashley Can have thousands of simultaneous conversations with voters in their primary language without getting frustrated or frustrated. While Ashley was far more personalized and interactive than your everyday robocall, she wasn’t a deepfake. SivoxThe company behind the bot, Ashley sounds robot enough that voters won’t confuse the voice for a real human.
They don’t have to—no federal law directly regulates what companies like Sivox are doing. As Twiggs said in his testimony, AI-powered tools aren’t necessarily a problem, but stealing and exploiting a musician’s likeness without their consent is too much. Without proper regulation, the line between “good” and “bad” applications of AI is blurred.
The question remains: Can Deepfakes really save artists from the constant demand for TikTok and content creation?
It’s possible that generative AI could be used to create personalized content for fans that, if done right, could be engaging without feeling shady. Fans are growing claim authenticity Musicians and influencers get their following, but most major artists are true to this Don’t actually create their own social media content A wide open secret. Maybe it’s just the sense of intimacy we crave — authenticity is optional. AI Twigs, for example, can post close friends’ Instagram stories in each fan’s primary language. (Billie Eilish for short Included everyone in the story of his close friends Leading up to the release of his latest album and gaining 10 million new followers — people love it.)
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the pros will outweigh the losses. Barrington told me that right now, DeepFake’s applications are about 95 percent bad and 5 percent good. Beyond nonconsensual pornography and identity fraud, “there is a fundamental erosion of democracy by creating confusion.” While AI Twigs presents an interesting positive use case, Barrington fears “it adds about 1 percent to that 5 percent good.”
You can create your own deepfake – but so can everyone else
Although some states has passed Laws addressing non-consensual deepfakesand addressing various bipartisan tasks Indecent photo And Digital reproduction in art Introduced at the federal level, there are effectively no laws preventing anyone from using generative AI to do whatever they want.
Let’s say AI Twigs goes live on Instagram. Ensuring that content featuring AI Twigs comes from some official FKA Twigs source, such as her verified Instagram account, would be pretty straightforward. But it will be very difficult to stop others from creating knockoff twigs.
“I could probably do it in a day,” Barrington told me. Even Barrington’s computer science majors don’t know It can figure out Relatively quick with some money and some YouTube tutorials. While an artist like FKA Twigs might be down to see their digital clone online, as long as they retain sole ownership of it, “I don’t know how she’s going to put it into practice,” Barrington said.
At least visual deepfakes – Especially if they depict the main character doing something extremely heinous Or they tend to land somewhere in the uncanny valley – contrary to their normal nature, so it’s still possible to spot them if you know what to look for. Meanwhile, high-quality synthetic voices are already indistinguishable from the originals, unless you have them State-of-the-art detection equipment (And Barrington said they don’t always work).
In any case, as we learned from last month’s ScarJo fiasco, Claiming complete ownership over one’s voice is difficultNo matter how unique.
Detection technology will not be able to overcome the potential harm of deepfakes. “There’s never going to be a silver bullet to identify with 100 percent accuracy whether something is fake,” Barrington told me, “and you can never prove the truth.”
AI generated media is here to stay, but FKA Twigs may be way ahead of the curve. Embracing generative AI as an artist feels a bit like making a deal with the devil: you can stop making promotional one-liners, but you might end up with porn or a AI-generated music without your consent.
Legal battles around the use of generative AI will likely inspire more regulation in the near future. But in the legal gray area we’re currently dealing with, AI Twigs probably presents more problems than it solves.
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