A few weeks ago, on the page of this paper, I published a deep, personal account of my father Robin about his 25 years of alienation.
I shared the emotionally troubling story that began about a small conflict in 1998, and the cold shadow of alienation that tragically he crept into until last December when we passed away without reconciliation.
This work is very important to me, and I decided to stop it from being copied, so I placed the copyright at the foot of the article in hopes of deterring the burglars.
As a celebrity interviewer for nearly 40 years, I'm familiar with being “aggregated” by others without permission, so I wanted to maintain some control.
However, within hours of my “alienated hell” being published in print and online on Mail+, it had been stolen. Was it probably from an individual who is a journalist? no. It was artificial intelligence, or AI, and was a very 21st century copyright theft.
In the morning, my feature came online. A YouTube channel called World News has released a 14-minute retelling of my work narrated by a female robot. The artificial intelligence seemed to get my article from behind the online paywall of emails and swallow it and then spit it out again. I felt bad.
For today's purposes, I'm naming the robot narrator Labelna after the Roman goddess of the myth of thieves, deceptions and profits. Laverna's heartfelt story delivery sounded like the direction that would be gained from Sat-nav, but it felt less emotional.
It was an upsetting experience to listen to the devastating parts of my life and be dictated by automata that has been scraped from the internet.
Rob McGibbon (Photo): A few weeks ago, I published a deep, personal account of 25 years of alienation from my father, Robin, on the page of this paper
Emotional: Rob McGibbon wrote about his broken relationship with his father
Two of my precious childhood photos with my father – again copyrighted for one use in the mail – was used as a Rolling Zoom-in-Zoom-Out Montage.
So I was playing soccer with him when I was three years old, and the robots were mechanically telling our harsh stories.
But then things got worse. Laverna followed the structure of my work, but all of its 1,800 words rewritten my text and created a de facto error.
My then girlfriend suddenly became my “fiance” and my stepfather was oddly “identified” with my estranged father, in contrast to my son's “identification” grandfather. Even more worrying, it called our feud “violent.”
But all the shaming was that in the AI version of my work, Labelna was pointy, not to mention my name and the copyright notice itself.
The mystery still remains. How did this video exist? Is that the “work” of an AI-powered scraper programmed to extract data from the entire website, and would it be robotically rethinking it?
Is ai intelligent enough to avoid broadcasting copyright taglines for stolen work? Certainly, from theft to publication, human hands are playing around somewhere along the dirty lines.
In any case, multiple video ads of intestinal medications were inserted throughout the video. So perhaps there was some money being made for someone else somewhere.
The postal campaign is about to suspend a labour government's plan to enable large tech companies to support creative works, unless copyright holders register to opt out.
The World News Channel has 23,400 subscribers and has posted 16,000 videos over the past 13 years, resulting in a total of 13 million viewings. Imagine how advertising revenues will suit you.
All of these bring me to YouTube, owned by Mega Rich Google. The fight, which turns out to be an object lesson in the struggle, is waiting for those who want to stop being plundered by the AI.
Essentially, it falls on you to do all the running, and it's a depressing round race.
My first complaint to the YouTube/Google Press office has resulted in the form of a standard statement. How convenient is it.
The World News Channel didn't have any website or contact details, so it was a non-starter detail. I tried to the next level.
YouTube/Google told me to submit a “copyright deletion claim.” This annoying form requires you to send your personal data to Google. My desires got cold when I insisted on having a mobile number to activate the complaints. Why do they need it?
About a week later, I suddenly received an email from Google saying that the world news had been “end.” By chance, copyright complaints were cleverly stopped because “violating spam policies” were prohibited.
I wanted to know how many views it received from the back of my story, but if there was, I wanted to know if I had earned money from Quack that it sold the miracle cure for that miracle problem. Some hopes.
Rob is about 3 years old playing with his father Robin.
This may be just one article, but it summarises the entire hell scape waiting for Big Tech if he wins evil ways with copyright.
The email was at the heart of the fight to halt the Labour Government's plans to enable large tech companies to support themselves with creative works, unless copyright holders sign up for opt-out.
Part of the campaign has revised the government's data bill to force AI developers to be transparent about content they misuse.
Undoubtedly, the bill passed Congress last week with a transparency clause rejected by a majority of Commons workers. You will receive a Royal Ascent right away, and train the greedy Goliath of Silicon Valley, essentially without having to pay or even ask, to train Creative Works (think the Beatles catalogue).
If my experience shows unaffected results from trying one AI video made from one article, what about complaining to Google, Meta, or Openai after strolling through thousands of works of your life on millions of unexplainable websites?
This brings me to the last stand out, absurd obfuscation of all this. I think this should be central to the current battle for copyright protection. Huge digital platforms are conspiring in this conspiracy.
YouTube reduces advertising revenue generated by all content “creators,” so even if taken without permission, it still benefits from financial exploitation of copyrighted material. In fact, YouTube sells stolen goods. It's about “no questions”, taking away as much rights as dangerous street market traders who sell cheap things with wink wink.
YouTube is to exempt all liability so that it is a slut dic and should not be tolerated anymore.
Imagine John Lewis openly selling stolen and counterfeit items from thousands of new independent sellers on his website, but explaining everything by saying, “Well, we're not selling anything – it's an independent.”
In the real world, there are things like trading standards. Running a physical store that bravely sells stolen goods can result in fines or closing. This is when similar rules are enforced by the government regarding fraudulent traders in virtual spaces.
AI becomes the villain of the master in copyright stealing. From behind the paywall, see what I did in my one article. Imagine what it does to the work of the Beatles and Elton John (by the way, last week the government described it as an “absolute loser” over the AI plan). Don't win.
©Robmcgibbon!
- Rob McGibbon is the editor of Chelsea citizens, an online newspaper in London's Chelsea region (Thechelseaciitizen.com).
