There's a lot in here. As I'm not a designer I don't totally recognize the connection to design--but there were a lot of interesting and thought-provoking ideas, like:
There's a lot in here. As I'm not a designer I don't totally recognize the connection to design--but there were a lot of interesting and thought-provoking ideas, like:
The codification of ownership over a text is often dated to the adoption of the Statute of Anne (1709) by the British Parliament, generally considered the first real copyright act. The first line of the law is revealing: “Whereas Printers, Booksellers, and other Persons, have of late frequently taken the Liberty of Printing… Books, and other Writings, without the Consent of the Authors… to their very great Detriment, and too often to the Ruin of them and their Families…” The statute secures the right to benefit financially from a work and for the author to preserve its textual integrity. That authorial right was deemed irrevocable. Text came to be seen as a form of private property. A romantic criticism arose that reinforced that relationship, searching for critical keys in the life and intention of the writer.
By laying a legal ground for ownership, the Statute of Anne defines who is, and isn’t, an author. It was a thoroughly modern problem. No one had owned the sacred texts. The very fact that the origins of sacred texts were lost in history, their authors either composites or anonymous, gave them their authority. The gospels in their purest form were public domain. Any work to be done, and any arguments to have, were interpretive. The authors referred to in the Statute were living, breathing — and apparently highly litigious — beings. The law granted them authority over the meaning and use of their own words.
Ownership of the text, and the authority granted to authors at the expense of the creative reader, fueled much of the 20th century’s obsession with authorship. Post-structuralist reading of authorship tends to critique the prestige attributed to the figure of the author and to suggest or speculate about a time after his fall from grace.
An interesting read in the context if gen ai training on and even reproducing various author’s work I agree that authors should be able to copywrite their work, but lately it seems to just be used...
An interesting read in the context if gen ai training on and even reproducing various author’s work
I agree that authors should be able to copywrite their work, but lately it seems to just be used as a weapon against sites like waybackmachine
Ah yes Gen AI is an interesting lens. When I was reading it I thought about street art and public art where the authorship of something is not widely known. Public art which lacks attribution...
Ah yes Gen AI is an interesting lens. When I was reading it I thought about street art and public art where the authorship of something is not widely known.
Public art which lacks attribution often belongs more to a place than to any individual and as long as it is not controversial itself people don't immediately think to critique it nor do they doubt that it is authentic. People don't go out of their way to verify that it was authorized to be installed where it is.
Likewise when Gen AI causes harm there isn't really an outlet for critique due to lack of authorship. That is, the model v83474383 cannot be publicly "cancelled". The lack of attribution makes it on a similar level to Holy Text and it should not be doubted--only interpreted through wizened eyes...
back to the article:
While some claims for authorship may be as simple as a renewed sense of responsibility, at times they seem to be ploys for property rights, attempts to finally exercise some kind of agency where traditionally there has been none. The author = authority. The longing for graphic authorship may be the longing for a kind of legitimacy, or a kind of power that has so long eluded the obedient designer. But do we get anywhere by celebrating the designer as some central character? Isn’t that what fueled the last fifty years of design history? If we really want to move beyond the designer-ashero model of history, we may have to imagine a time when we can ask, “What difference does it make who designed it?”
In my mind the lack of authorship makes the art even more sacrosanct (or at least more... fragile?). Like a lost item in the place that it was lost (and not within the confines of a "lost & found" bin where it almost feels like something profane and dirty). Public art, public domain, and Gen AI can feel like both extremes of this spectrum.
I think it matters a lot who wrote things these days, with so much of it being untruthful. For writing in the artistic sense though it wouldn’t have bothered me a lot to not know where it came...
I think it matters a lot who wrote things these days, with so much of it being untruthful.
For writing in the artistic sense though it wouldn’t have bothered me a lot to not know where it came from five years ago, but with gen ai now I really really do not want to read something a bot generated in five minutes.
I might change my mind on that some day, but I just don’t view ai art as authentic art. The AI model itself could be considered art to me, but not what it produces.
Great point. The abundance of AI slop shortens the benefit of doubt that people will give a work before deciding that it is not worthwhile to read because it might be computer generated. The...
Great point. The abundance of AI slop shortens the benefit of doubt that people will give a work before deciding that it is not worthwhile to read because it might be computer generated.
The mistakes that AI makes have a certain style but they are not pleasant artifacts. I'm sure it's possible for this to change--but the idea of computer generated media (outside of a research context) does feel rather soulless and demoralizing.
It also feels deeply unethical to pay a robot for art instead of a human. And yet people don't feel as bad paying for mass produced goods instead of handmade if one is cheaper, has fewer defects, or a better design.
Another lens for looking at authorship/legitimacy that might be useful is the concept of stylebooks in journalism and differing newspaper styles (bias is interesting because selection is part of editing but style is much more than bias).
And also the lens of mass editing where many people edit a single work. This could be a screenplay or it could be Wikipedia. There's also a difference in how people perceive a work (and how they edit) when they see "1,732 revisions" of edit history vs. they get something from a friend to proofread who they believe is the sole author.
There's a lot in here. As I'm not a designer I don't totally recognize the connection to design--but there were a lot of interesting and thought-provoking ideas, like:
An interesting read in the context if gen ai training on and even reproducing various author’s work
I agree that authors should be able to copywrite their work, but lately it seems to just be used as a weapon against sites like waybackmachine
Ah yes Gen AI is an interesting lens. When I was reading it I thought about street art and public art where the authorship of something is not widely known.
Public art which lacks attribution often belongs more to a place than to any individual and as long as it is not controversial itself people don't immediately think to critique it nor do they doubt that it is authentic. People don't go out of their way to verify that it was authorized to be installed where it is.
Likewise when Gen AI causes harm there isn't really an outlet for critique due to lack of authorship. That is, the model v83474383 cannot be publicly "cancelled". The lack of attribution makes it on a similar level to Holy Text and it should not be doubted--only interpreted through wizened eyes...
back to the article:
In my mind the lack of authorship makes the art even more sacrosanct (or at least more... fragile?). Like a lost item in the place that it was lost (and not within the confines of a "lost & found" bin where it almost feels like something profane and dirty). Public art, public domain, and Gen AI can feel like both extremes of this spectrum.
I think it matters a lot who wrote things these days, with so much of it being untruthful.
For writing in the artistic sense though it wouldn’t have bothered me a lot to not know where it came from five years ago, but with gen ai now I really really do not want to read something a bot generated in five minutes.
I might change my mind on that some day, but I just don’t view ai art as authentic art. The AI model itself could be considered art to me, but not what it produces.
Great point. The abundance of AI slop shortens the benefit of doubt that people will give a work before deciding that it is not worthwhile to read because it might be computer generated.
The mistakes that AI makes have a certain style but they are not pleasant artifacts. I'm sure it's possible for this to change--but the idea of computer generated media (outside of a research context) does feel rather soulless and demoralizing.
It also feels deeply unethical to pay a robot for art instead of a human. And yet people don't feel as bad paying for mass produced goods instead of handmade if one is cheaper, has fewer defects, or a better design.
Another lens for looking at authorship/legitimacy that might be useful is the concept of stylebooks in journalism and differing newspaper styles (bias is interesting because selection is part of editing but style is much more than bias).
And also the lens of mass editing where many people edit a single work. This could be a screenplay or it could be Wikipedia. There's also a difference in how people perceive a work (and how they edit) when they see "1,732 revisions" of edit history vs. they get something from a friend to proofread who they believe is the sole author.