Does generative AI have the capacity to provide commentary on the value of art and fashion?

I would say no. I think most people would agree with me. Yet, when I asked a generative AI what are designer John Galliano’s best collections, it presented me with an expert list of his best work.

AI does not (yet) have the ability to meaningfully or sensibly provide a critique on the worth of a fashion collection. So of course, any ideas it presents are sourced from the existing critiques and written analyses of others. Its list was completely unsourced. No attribution as to where these ideas had come from.

I had to prompt the AI to give me its sources. It no longer gives you the information automatically. Lo and behold, there’s RUSSH in the source list. It shows an article that took one of our award-winning contributors hours to research and write – and only after they had accumulated enough years of expertise to actually be in a position to provide a commentary on fashion in the first place.

But here are those words, thoughts, ideas, years of expertise; repackaged and served to you through generative AI for $20 a month.

The sad reality is that by the time you’re reading this particular article, it will have been scraped 10 times over by dozens of generative AIs. All of them using it to train its systems; and inform the answers it spits out to users at a cost.

There’s almost no way to truly opt out of AI scraping your work if it’s on the internet. And by the time many writers and publishers realised AI scraping was happening, it was too late anyway.

Our content had already been scraped and ingested.

Whether at work, with friends or simply watching TikTok, it’s hard to get through a day without someone talking about AI. But every discussion, every networking workshop, every casually-generated AI meme... it's stomach-churning for anyone who creates content.

Watching your words, your research being regurgitated for profit; its a savage experience that's hard to tangibly explain.

AI is stealing, and getting away with it

When first encountering generative AI, it truly looks like magic. An all-knowing assistant that lives on your laptop or phone, ready to provide you with answers at any time, about any topic. It feels too good to be true – and that’s because it is.

Generative AI is not pulling a proverbial rabbit out of a hat. It’s not conjuring content out of thin air.

These AI models have to be trained on existing content, fed millions of words, thousands of books and articles. It does not and cannot work without being powered by the creative contributions of writers, artists, publishers and researchers.

In 2023 a group of authors filed a class action lawsuit after it was discovered that nearly 200,000 books had been unknowingly taken and scraped to train generative AI. The suit alleges Big Tech companies Microsoft and OpenAI (which owns ChatGPT) violated copyright law in feeding their AIs with this material.

Big Tech argues it is simply the same as any writer who reads books to improve their own writing skills. But of course, when any individual or company uses copyrighted material, they’re supposed to actually pay for it.

Consent and compensation

Two of my cousins work at the forefront of the technology space. They argue that generative AI is a bit like someone recreating a famous artwork in their spare time. But I say, there’s a big difference between someone recreationally painting a version of the Mona Lisa in their home and generative AI.

Imagine for a moment this scenario.

John has a bakery. He offers people free samples of his bread, in exchange for entering his bakery. He hopes after people experience his store – and the products that he lovingly makes with his own hands – that they will continue to patronise his shopfront.

But across the road is a multi-million-dollar corporation. The corporation forcibly takes all the samples of John’s bread without asking. The corporation then repackages them and starts charging $20 per box.

Clearly, there is a consent and compensation issue.

There are those who attempt to argue around the issue of consent, claiming the content was on the internet for free anyway. But the notion that publisher content is knowingly on the internet for free – making it ultimately “fair game” – fell flat when generative AI started charging people for our words.

In Australia and many other parts of the world, it is illegal to profit off someone else’s copyrighted work. But the law has not yet caught up to the way in which Big Tech is using our creative works for profit. There are very few legal protections available to writers and creators at this moment in time. Instead, we must simply watch as generative AI continues to take; leaving us with nothing in its wake.

AI could choose to support human creativity – or kill it

Everyday, people are turning to generative AI for help with Europe trip inspiration, movie lists and skincare explainers. They do so, without realising they’re receiving stolen answers, and that writers are losing readers in the process.

Its not for a lack of relevancy. Clearly our content is relevant enough to be scraped and spat out by the AI. Users are indeed hungry for creator and publisher-led content.

Our content is available in good faith to people who enjoy storytelling. All we ask when we share our journalism is for readers to simply visit our website or read our magazine. But when every mechanism for readers to find our content has an in-built AI search or AI summary of our words, it’s increasingly challenging for our readers to actually access our websites.

It’s a seemingly unwinnable situation. With every new tech announcement, AI is burrowed further and further into everything from social media, search, even offline programs like Microsoft Word.

There is a different way forward. Big Tech could actively engage with publishers. Ask permission to use their work and pay them a fee for it’s use. These companies have the power to nourish creators and offer a future where creating is actually a sustainable thing to do.

We’re at a turning point. The multi-million- and billion-dollar companies behind generative AI have the ability to truly champion human creativity, or kill it.

It is a question that Big Tech needs carefully consider. Because, when generative AI has finished ransacking and pillaging the last remaining publisher into non-existence, where will it source its answers?