Strong rights for human authors are needed to defend truth-telling itself

ETHICAL journalists use their authorial and image-making skills to tell the truth in ways that effectively inform the decisions that citizens make. Without this provision of truthful information to the world's publics, neither the concept of democratic decision-making nor that of well-functioning markets would make sense. Legislation is urgently needed to give citizens a right to know where the information they see comes from.

World Intellectual Property Day on 26 April 2024 fell in the shadow of a challenge to the very concept of truth-telling. We will on this occasion focus on one of the many issues that machine learning systems – so-called “artificial intelligence” – raise for intellectual property: attribution of works. Who – or what – made that?

These systems of course operate by vacuuming up creative works – including those of journalists – into systems that, given a “prompt”, generate text or images or sounds that are statistically likely responses to the prompt. Textual systems in particular are prone to “confabulation” – going so far as to invent books and research papers to “support” wholly fictitious statements.

This tendency to lie, by itself, reduces public trust in all published words, images and speech. Possibly even more dangerous is the malicious use of “AI” systems deliberately to generate false testimony – we are already seeing words that politicians did not utter put into their mouths in “deepfake” video.

Together, the effect of these uses and abuses of “AI” is to encourage the belief that “nothing is true”. Citizens who believe this are at enormous risk of exploitation, whether it is by malicious political forces or by fraudulent commercial operators that entice them to follow emotionally-driven paths, for example using statements that they would like to be true.

Legislators have already concluded that part of the answer to this threat lies in ensuring that the outputs of “AI” systems are labelled as such – for example in the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act.

Such measures will not work, we believe, unless the other side of the coin is present. All human authors – including photographers – must have an enforceable right to be identified as the human author of a work – including the use of a nom de plume if for example it is necessary to their safety.

Journalists in the United States have no such right; and throughout the English-speaking world such rights are not practically enforceable. We call on legislators worldwide to ensure that their citizens have a right to know who or what produced the words, sounds an images that they see, with penalties on those who deceive.

We shall have more to say on other ways in which “AI” impacts intellectual property, such as:

• the importance of ensuring that compensation for the historic abuse of copyright works goes to journalists, other authors and performers, not only to companies that exploit their work; and
• the need to ensure that authors can forbid their work being gobbled up by AI in future.

The need for citizens to be informed of the authorship of what they see is urgent.

Postscript

To expound the importance and necessity of journalism is perhaps not popular in England. But consider these remarks by Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on World Press Freedom Day, 3 May 2024:

This year, World Press Freedom Day centres on journalism in the face of the environmental crisis.

I honour the journalists around the world who are working to hold polluters accountable for the damage and the devastation.

They are driving open debate and critical thinking.

And by separating facts from lies and propaganda, they are pushing for evidence-based policy decisions on the climate crisis that the world so urgently needs.

Their work is fundamental to trigger change, yet it can also be dangerous.

...We need independent, ethical and quality journalism perhaps now more than ever. On the climate crisis - and on all crises - journalists serve as the ultimate allies in human rights. Because in their pursuit of facts, evidence and accountability, we have one of our best hopes to build societies based on truth and trust.

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© Mike Holderness