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A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

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Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#111
What I'd really like to see is a label on original reporting.

Even beyond AI, the vast majority of news is re-packaging information you got from somewhere else. AI can replace the re-writers, but not the original journalists, people who spoke to primary sources (or who were themselves eyewitnesses).

Any factual document should reference its sources. If not, it should be treated skeptically, regardless of whether AI or a human is doing that.

An article isn't automatically valueless just because it's synthesized. It can focus and contextualize, regardless of whether it's human or AI written. But it should at the very least be able to say "This is the actual fact of the matter", with a link to it. (And if AI has hallucinated the link, that's a huge red flag.)

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#112

So literally every article will be labeled as AI assisted and it will be meaningless. >The use of generative artificial intelligence systems shall not result in: (i) discharge, displacement or loss of position Being able to fire employees is a great use of AI and should not be restricted. > or (ii) transfer of existing duties and functions previously performed by employees or worker Is this saying you can't replace a…

> Being able to fire employees is a great use of AI and should not be restricted.

Can you elaborate on this?

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#113

I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation news here tbh. Maybe there's an apathy and exhaustion to it. But if you're developing AI stuff, you need to keep on top of this. This is a pretty pivotal moment. NY has been busy with RAISE (frontier AI safety protocols, audits, incident reporting), S8420A (must disclose AI-generated performers in ads), GBL Article 47 (crisis detection & disclaimers for AI cha…

None of those bills/laws involve legislating publishing though. This bill would require a disclaimer on something published. That’s a freedom of speech issue, so it going to be tougher to enforce and keep from getting overturned in the courts. The question here are what are the limits the government can have on what a company publishes, regardless of how the content is generated.

IMO, It’s a much tougher problem (legally) than protecting actors from AI infringement on their likeness. AI services are easier to regulate.. published AI generated content, much more difficult.

The article also mentions efforts by news unions of guilds. This might be a more effective mechanism. If a person/union/guild required members to add a tagline in their content/articles, this would have a similar effect - showing what is and what is not AI content without restricting speech.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#114
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ideally, trying to pass anything AI-generated as human-made content would be illegal, not just news, but it's a good start. Does photoshop fall under this category?

Spell check, autocomplete, grammar editing, A-B tests for bylines and photo use, related stories, viewers also read, tag generation I guess you have to disclose every single item on your new site that does anything like this. Any byte that touches a stochastic process is tainted forever.

None of those things are "AI" (LLMs). We had those things before, we'll have them after.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#115

I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation news here tbh. Maybe there's an apathy and exhaustion to it. But if you're developing AI stuff, you need to keep on top of this. This is a pretty pivotal moment. NY has been busy with RAISE (frontier AI safety protocols, audits, incident reporting), S8420A (must disclose AI-generated performers in ads), GBL Article 47 (crisis detection & disclaimers for AI cha…

> I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation news here tbh. Because no one believes these laws or bills or acts or whatever will be enforced. But I actually believe they'll be. In the worst way possible: honest players will be punished disproportionally.

>But I actually believe they'll be. In the worst way possible: honest players will be punished disproportionally.

As with everything else BigCo with their legal team will explain to the enforcers why their "right up to the line if not over it" solution is compliant and mediumco and smallco will be the ones getting fined or being forced to waste money staying far from the line or paying a 3rd party to do what bigco's legal team does at cost.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#116
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's true. The 'this battle is already over' attitude is the most defeatist strategy possible. It's effectively complying in advance, rolling over before you've attempted to create the best possible outcome. With that attitude we would not have voting, human rights (for what they're worth these days), unions, a prohibition on slavery and tons of other things we take for granted every day. I'm sure AI…

> With that attitude we would not have voting, human rights (for what they're worth these days), unions, a prohibition on slavery and tons of other things we take for granted every day. None of these things were rolling back a technology. History shows that technology is a ratchet, the only way to get rid of a technology is social collapse or surplanting the technology with something even more useful or at the very l…

We have plenty of examples of regulated technology.

And usually the general public does not have a direct stake in the outcome (ok, maybe broadcast spectrum regulation should be mentioned there), but this time they do and given what's at stake it may well be worth trying to define what a good set of possible outcomes would be and how to get there.

As I mentioned above and which TFA is all about, the press for instance could be held to a standard that they have shown they can easily meet in the past.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#117

I'm surprised to see so little coverage of AI legislation news here tbh. Maybe there's an apathy and exhaustion to it. But if you're developing AI stuff, you need to keep on top of this. This is a pretty pivotal moment. NY has been busy with RAISE (frontier AI safety protocols, audits, incident reporting), S8420A (must disclose AI-generated performers in ads), GBL Article 47 (crisis detection & disclaimers for AI cha…

None of those bills/laws involve legislating publishing though. This bill would require a disclaimer on something published. That’s a freedom of speech issue, so it going to be tougher to enforce and keep from getting overturned in the courts. The question here are what are the limits the government can have on what a company publishes, regardless of how the content is generated. IMO, It’s a much tougher problem (leg…

> This bill would require a disclaimer on something published. That’s a freedom of speech issue

They can publish all they want, they just have to label it clearly. I don’t see how that is a free speech issue.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#118
post #4

Ideally, trying to pass anything AI-generated as human-made content would be illegal, not just news, but it's a good start.

That could do more harm than good. Like how California's bylaw about cancer warnings are useless because it makes it look like everything is known to the state of California to cause cancer, which in turn makes people just ignore and tune-out the warnings because they're not actually delivering signal-to-noise. This in turn harms people when they think, "How bad can tobacco be? Even my Aloe Vera plant has a warning l…

> That could do more harm than good.

The downside to having labels on AI-written political comments, stellar reviews of bad products, speeches by a politician, or supposed photos of wonderful holiday destinations in ads targeted at old people are what, exactly?

Are you really arguing that putting a label on AI generated content could do more harm than just leaving it (approximately) indistinguishable from the real thing might somehow be worse?

I'm not arguing that we need to label anything that used gen AI in any capacity, but past the point of e.g. minor edits, yeah, it should be labeled.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#119
post #4

Ideally, trying to pass anything AI-generated as human-made content would be illegal, not just news, but it's a good start.

What does that mean though? Photos taken using mobile camera apps are processed using AI. Many Photoshop tools now use AI.

Obviously it should not apply to anything using machine learning based algorithms in any way, just content made using generative AI, with exceptions for minor applications and/or a separate label for smaller edits.

Re: A new bill in New York would require disclaimers on AI-generated news content

#120
post #4

Ideally, trying to pass anything AI-generated as human-made content would be illegal, not just news, but it's a good start.

Ideally, we would just ban AI content altogether.

I don't think there's any way for that to happen, and IF we could create a solid legislative framework, AI could definitely (at some point in the future) contribute more good than bad to society.
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