Authentically Human®
Philosophy
Ensuring you have a voice in both consumer and creative rights protection
AI Usage Disclosure is a matter of consumer rights protection.
It’s important to be clear that we’re not against the use of Artificial Intelligence. We’re for using AI in ethical, transparent ways.
The difficulty arises when the application of AI technologies involves the non-consensual use of intellectual property or personal data. We believe you should have a choice whether to engage with Artificial Intelligence, or not. And part of that, is clearly marking where AI has (or in our case HASN’T) been used.
AI is here to stay, and just like any technological advancement, it’s going to change the way we work. But it also has the potential to drastically impact our relationship with intellectual property, as well as the way that consumers engage with businesses, creatives, and professionals in all industries. AI powered chatbots have become increasingly capable of handling everything from pre-sale questions for retailers, to navigational questions and much more on government sponsored websites and online tools.
These changes and their pace raise questions about the rights of consumers, and the rights of professionals. Ensuring clarity about how artificial intelligence has been used in the tools we engage with is of paramount importance as this technology continues to develop, and we believe that you should have a voice in that conversation. Clear disclosure of AI use in commerce and consumer facing tools has already been raised within the United States legislative system, as a potential bill outlined by Rep. Richie Torres [D-NY-15].
We believe that while legislation is important in the management of regulation in newly emmerging technologies, it is not enough on its own. The continuing advancement of AI technologies has to this point progressed at a much quicker pace than legislation is traditionally capable of moving. Given the far-reaching impact of AI across vast industries and economic sectors… we believe that action needs to be taken by private entities and individuals to protect the rights of creatives and consumers NOW.
Various entities have proposed labeling systems, and some companies have begun requiring disclosure of AI use in content shared on their platforms. But these systems are in the early stages of development, aren’t widely adopted, and frequently rely on the content’s creator themselves disclosing that they used AI in their process.
Systems for detecting AI having been used in a process aren’t fully reliable either, and various AI generation platforms as they’ve developed have made it more and more difficult to identify the differences between AI generated artwork (as an example) and artwork that is Authentically Human®.
For these reasons, we believe that the best first step to identifying what is, and is not created with AI, is for the community of professionals and creatives who are devoted to Authentically Human® creativity coming together, and labeling their work as 100% Non-AI generated.
Because these technologies exist within the online ecosystem, where national borders have little true meaning, we also believe it’s not an exaggeration to state that cross-industry implementation of AI usage disclosure standards can help to protect EVERYONE, regardless of nationality.
The Tenets
Three core concepts underly everything we believe in, and they’re all focused on YOU.
Consumer Protection
Creative Protection
Data Privacy
In short:
We believe in transparency, and protecting your rights.
When we started manufacturing products, we didn’t need to label where they came from. They were purchased from their creators, who lived where they sold their wares.
And then the world got more complicated, and it became required to disclose the sources of materials, the location of manufacturing, and all that other fun stuff you see on product labels. From our food to our clothes, we get important (and sometimes WILDLY detailed) information about what’s in the items we’re buying, as well as how and where they were made.
As it stands, these kinds of rules and regulations don’t apply to whether or not AI has been used in the process of creating what you’re buying. That’s not just a problem for individuals working in industries where AI can do things that would normally be done by humans, like art, design, writing, code development, project planning, etc. It’s also a problem for consumers, and in data privacy and protection.
Imagine you hire a freelancer to write some blog posts for your small business – in this imaginary situation, you make soap. So you’ve hired a freelancer you found on the big green freelancer website, and they’re advertising their services as blog writing. They don’t specify that THEY write the blogs – but honestly you don’t really think they have to. Who else would write them… right?
You assume when you purchase their services that you’re paying for their expertise – but when you receive the finished products, it becomes super clear SUPER fast that you’ve received content output by an AI generation tool.
But you can’t get a refund. Because you agreed to the terms of the purchase, and technically…. the items are as advertized.
But when you made your purchase, you didn’t know that you were agreeing to receive posts written by AI, you thought you were hiring the freelancer themselves to write them.
This problem? Entirely solved by AI Usage Disclosure. By using the Authentically Human® stamps in their self promotion, you’d be able to see that they’ve committed to outputting work they created themselves.
It’s not an understatement to say that AI is changing the landscape of creative industries as we know them – and also the landscape of creativity itself. With a few clicks and a prompt, image generating algorithms can compile artistic “works” based on scans of billions of images that it’s learned the format of.
Without picking up a paintbrush, you can generate a digital watercolor painting, an acrylic masterpiece, or an ethereal oil painting. In the same sense you can ask tools like ChatGPT to output copy about any topic imaginable.
And in this changing, shifting landscape… there are major questions of ethics raised. Copyrights to creative works are protected, however most of these tools have been trained on copyrighted works, without the consent of the original creators.
We believe that one of the first steps to ethical AI, is transparency. Being clear that AI has been used to generate a piece of work (or hasn’t, as the first step we’re proposing) eliminates the question of “how do we know what’s what anymore” and allows us to move to more productive conversations, like “what model can be used to ensure artists are receiving fair compensation for the use of their work?”
We’ve all been trained at this point to check the “terms & conditions” confirmations when we join a new platform. Those documents are LONG, they’re cumbersome to read, and who has the time for that, right? We’re lucky if the company in question gives us a little bulleted list of the high-points, too. As we enter the age of AI integration, these terms and condition checkboxes? There’s a good chance we’re consenting to more than we were before… significantly more.
Now we’re not saying that we weren’t giving up some sense of privacy before, because we all know that we definitely were. We’ve consented to everything from Google tracking the movement of our mouse (ever looked up how ReCaptcha works?) to applications tracking activity on our phones that happens outside of their app. But in our new changing landscape, AI algorithms are now reviewing data at light speed – data that was previously scrutinized by human eyes. With this increased “speed and efficiency”, personal data privacy becomes a real concern.
Take Google’s “AI Lab” addition to Google Docs & Google Sheets in summer 2023. If you read through the terms and conditions for their beta of the AI Lab addition, it specificically listed that they would suggest not including “personally identifying data” in your Google Docs items after opting in, as they would be using human reviewers to verify the accuracy of their AI algorithm as it parsed the data it scraped from your documents – meaning your personally identifying information, if included in your document, would be at risk.
Was this information made available to the user? Technically… yes. Was it made clearly and transparently? No. No it was not.
For now, these features are in beta – they’re optional. But in the very near future… they may be baked into the Google Docs ecosystem, and in that hypothetical situation, if you want to use Google Docs, you’ll HAVE to consent to their AI terms.
This is only one example among many. As AI continues to be integrated into our online (and real life) landscape, we need to problematize these exact situations, and more fully understand the potential impact on the personally identifying data of individuals.
If the Authentically Human® stamp becomes a marker of content created by real people, for real people, you’ll be able to look for it to know what exactly you’re getting into when you work with any company, or individual. But getting there starts with adoption – and that’s where you come in!
The Funding
Getting information like this out there takes investment, both of time, and money.
As a grassroots movement, our funding is grassroots too.
We believe that getting this information out there is deeply important to the ethical development and use of AI technologies. And we believe that you deserve to have a voice in how regulation is shaped and implemented. But like any campaign of this nature… that takes community support.
Up to now, this endeavor has been supported financially by the co-founders, but we have big goals. Your donation can help us work toward providing more tools to help you identify where the creativity you’re seeing online is in fact Authentically Human®.