Newsletter and Grammar Coach
MARCH 2024 | Vol. 28, No. 3
Monthly information digest for EditPros clients and friends
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CONTENTS
FEATURE: Copyright questions involving AI-generated content remain murky and unresolved
BOOKSHELF: Personal finance expert Terry Bontemps uses BookPrep to publish his first book
GRAMMAR COACH: Fielding our readers’ questions
REFERRAL REWARD: Recommend a friend — and earn up to $500
 
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The Sirens of ancient Greek mythology have materialized and are among us, in the form of AI — artificial intelligence. The Sirens about whom Homer wrote in The Odyssey around 700 B.C. were enigmatic — alluring and spellbinding, yet mystifying and potentially dangerous. The sailors who according to legend died while helplessly captivated knew little about the Sirens other than they found their songs mesmerizing. While AI may not be lethal, our understanding of it is far overshadowed by what we don’t know about its potential repercussions.
Some people warn that the ability of AI to learn and its potential to eventually assume and exert control over essential infrastructure pose a potential threat to human existence. AI applications already have begun infringing in the realm of artistic creation, raising alarm among songwriters, musical performers, actors, artists, software engineers, financial analysts and people in other professions involving data accumulation and digital imagery.
While some people feel threatened, others have begun adapting AI to their benefit, including writers who view AI as a means to assimilate, organize and explain information at lightning speed, in clear narrative. ChatGPT, perhaps the best known of the AI platforms, can spew out paragraphs or pages of literate text in a flash upon command, free of charge to anyone with a web browser and an Internet connection. Other so-called “writing assistants,” free as well as fee-based, include GrammarlyGO, CopyAI, Articleforge, Hyperwrite, Jasper, Writesonic, Anyword, Rytr, INK, Smart Copy by Unbounce, Long Shot and AI Writer.
Some AI applications can generate imagery from written descriptions. Those include Image Creator from Microsoft Designer, DALL-E 2 from open AI, Midjourney, Artbreeder, Dream by WOMBO, Craiyon, and DreamStudio by Stability AI. Their capabilities vary among generating images that look like drawings, paintings or remarkably realistic images that can be mistaken for photographs.
While AI-generated imagery and writing are surprisingly lucid and crisp, the ownership of AI-generated content from a copyright perspective remains murky. AI applications create content by extracting information from the internet and other data repositories sometimes called “data lakes” and by learning and applying vocabulary, syntax and imagery patterns.
Each AI application has fine-print terms of use, a good many of which say that content they generate in response to “prompts” (instructions) from humans is in public domain, but that assertion is questionable — and troubling. Because content that AI applications generate ultimately is derived from written or visual material that humans create, copyright ownership questions arise. Aside from ethical questions about writers integrating AI-generated content into works they claim to be theirs, the legality of publishing AI-generated material is debatable.
Users have ‘potential liability for copyright infringement’
On their company blog in June 2023, intellectual property lawyers Jordan E. Meggison-Decker & Jill M. Gastineau of the Des Moines law firm Brown Winick wrote, “there have already been cases filed in federal court against OpenAI alleging that by training ChatGPT on copyrighted images and text, OpenAI and end users should be liable for copyright infringement when images subsequently produced by ChatGPT too closely resemble the copyrighted images used in the bot’s training. Therefore, chatbot users should be aware of the potential liability for copyright infringement when asking ChatGPT to produce a [piece of] writing or image for them.”
Another intellectual property lawyer, Adan Jimenez of the Apex Law Group in Seattle, acknowledges considerable confusion about copyright law related to AI content due to lack of guidance thus far from the judicial system. In his law firm’s blog, he did write, “Most importantly for copyright protections to attach the author must be a human. This means that no AI generator has the legal ability to hold the copyright to a work.” That may create copyright ownership uncertainty for writers who integrate AI-generated written passages or imagery in their work. For Jimenez, the distinction is clear: “If you have a mixture of human and AI-created content, you must disclaim the portion of the work created by the AI.”
A tangential but equally important question is whether AI content is in itself culpable for copyright infringement. In a “legal sidebar” published September 29, 2023, the Congressional Research Service (a unit of the U.S. Congress) observed that "AI systems are ‘trained’ to create literary, visual, and other artistic works by exposing the program to large amounts of data, which may include text, images, and other works downloaded from the internet.” The article continued, “OpenAI, for example, acknowledges that its programs are trained on ‘large, publicly available datasets that include copyrighted works’ and that this process ‘involves first making copies of the data to be analyzed’ (although it now offers an option to remove images from training future image generation models). Creating such copies without permission may infringe the copyright holders’ exclusive right to make reproductions of their work.”
The legal sidebar explored the question about who is (or should be) liable if AI-generated materials infringe on the copyrights of existing creative works. “Under current doctrines, both the AI user and the AI company could potentially be liable,” the article concluded.
In March 2023 the United States Copyright Office itself weighed in on the matter, declaring that “copyright can protect only material that is the product of human creativity.” In a policy statement titled “Copyright Registration Guidance for Works Containing Material Generated by Artificial Intelligence,” the Copyright Office observed that “these technologies, often described as ‘generative AI,’ raise questions about whether the material they produce is protected by copyright, whether works consisting of both human-authored and AI-generated material may be registered, and what information should be provided to the Office by applicants seeking to register them.”
AI is ‘not the product of human authorship’
The policy statement, published in the Federal Register on March 16, 2023, declared “when an AI technology receives solely a prompt from a human and produces complex written, visual, or musical works in response, the ‘traditional elements of authorship’ are determined and executed by the technology — not the human user. Based on the Office’s understanding of the generative AI technologies currently available, users do not exercise ultimate creative control over how such systems interpret prompts and generate material.” The policy statement proclaimed, “When an AI technology determines the expressive elements of its output, the generated material is not the product of human authorship. As a result, that material is not protected by copyright and must be disclaimed in a registration application.”
The only certainty for now is that more legal maneuvering and determinations will follow. In our view, journalists and authors should exercise caution about incorporating AI-generated content verbatim in their written work. Treat it like background material, research the content more thoroughly on your own, and then integrate that content into your writing using your own words and powers of interpretation. And think twice before publishing AI-generated imagery; commission original artwork or photography, use your own photos, or purchase copyright-free images from stock houses instead. That should help you steer clear of legal and ethical entanglements related to AI-generated content.
Financial expert Terry Bontemps discovered a viable path from financial uncertainty to wealth, about which he has been counseling individuals and speaking to groups for years. Now he has documented his insights and his successful approach to prosperity in his book Wealth For the Rest of Us (6 x 9 inches, ISBN 979-8-9900623-0-6). The 230-page high-quality paperback book, published in February, describes how anyone who is not wealthy can acquire wealth, own a home and invest in real estate regardless of their credit score or what they have in their bank account.
Terry began building his own wealth in 2001 by purchasing bank notes for mortgaged homes, including foreclosed property. That’s far different from renovating and flipping homes or being a landlord. He does neither. Bank notes are the loan agreements between home buyers and lenders — typically banks. Terry found a lucrative path to wealth by buying at favorable rates notes that banks wanted to sell to increase their liquid assets. As holder of these bank notes, Terry became the lender, deriving a steady income stream from property owners.
Investment in bank notes is achievable for people of modest means because, as Terry explains, it does not require a high credit score, a big savings account or investment experience.
“Wealth should be accessible, equitable and inclusive to everyone, not just the wealthy,” Terry asserts. “Wealth For the Rest of Us is a practical, step-by-step guide to acquiring wealth, multiplying your wealth, keeping wealth, and being able to pass generational wealth down to your family.”
He says that people need only to be willing, ready and committed to begin deriving wealth by purchasing foreclosures from banks.
“This book is the battle cry of the middle class, the poor, minorities, and marginalized communities. It is for anyone who feels excluded from the wealth-building process due to their credit score, experience, or how much they have or don’t have in their bank account,” Terry said. “Wealth For the Rest of Us is for people who want to avoid being dependent on working for money, which is my definition of being wealthy.”
If you have been writing a book and you’re ready to publish it, EditPros’ BookPrep service can help you achieve your goal. As part of the BookPrep package, EditPros professionally formats the interior pages of each of each author’s book, designs the book cover, and readies the consolidated material for print publication. Although Terry chose to publish his book only in print form, EditPros also formats and converts manuscript files to conform to e-book specifications for sales through Amazon (Kindle), Apple (iBooks), Barnes & Noble (Nook), and Kobo, by means of submission to IngramSpark’s e-book service.
This is the 56th book that BookPrep has produced for authors during the past eight years. With BookPrep, authors retain all rights to their books, and collect 100% of sales royalties.
We invite you to LEARN MORE about the EditPros BookPrep service.
Clay T. wrote:
“Can a sign talk? Can an instruction manual comprehend written language? That thought always pops into my head when someone tells me something like that sign says no vacancy or the next sentence in the assembly manual reads ‘feed the power cord through the bushing in the bottom rail.’ And then on the TV game show Family Feud, first with Richard Dawson and more recently with Steve Harvey, you’d always hear survey said! Those uses of ‘says’ and ‘reads’ seem odd to me in those instances. A sign or a survey can’t say something and a piece of paper can’t read. What do you think?”
The grammar coach replies:
Clay, the verbs “say” and “read” are being used properly in the cases you cited. Webster’s New World College Dictionary, among other concurring reference sources, lists 22 meanings for the verb “read,” including these three definitions: to have or give a particular meaning when read [a poem that reads several ways]; to contain, or be drawn up in, certain words [the sentence reads as follows]; to admit of being read as specified [a story that reads well].
The same dictionary includes eight definitions for the verb “say,” including these: to express in words — state, declare or tell; to indicate or show [the clock says 10]; to communicate (an idea, feeling, etc.) [a painting that says nothing].
Even so, we understand your point. If you’re looking for alternative ways to express those concepts, consider using “indicate,” “signal,” “denote,” “specify,” stipulate” or other inanimate term appropriate to the context instead. That’s what the survey says.
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