OpenAI is proposing a tool that would allow artists to opt-out of having their artwork used to train generative AI models. They are also proposing that you put signs saying “Please don’t steal my stuff” on your front door, car, and on anything else you own that you don’t want people to take without asking.
https://www.wired.com/story/openai-olive-branch-artists-ai-algorithms/
Let’s face it, this is a murky move. Opt-outs are a form of design “anti-pattern” that we see every day in things like spam emails and cookie opt-outs. It’s easier to make an opt-out hard than it is to make an opt-in easy. Opt-outs are often difficult and time-consuming to complete and that’s assuming that people even know about it at all.
You have to ask yourself – wouldn’t it be safer and easier and fairer for OpenAI to ask people to opt-in? Of course it would. Why won’t they? Because they’ve already said that their technology can’t work without huge amounts of copyright protected information to feed on.
This opt-out is like asking Dracula to take his fangs out of your neck. (It sucks)
