Wow, this even caught me off guard for a minute! Publisher referrals and outreach appreciated.

I’ve resigned from my role leading the Audio team at Stability AI, because I don’t agree with the company’s opinion that training generative AI models on copyrighted works is ‘fair use’. First off, I want to say that there are lots of people at Stability who are deeply thoughtful about these issues. I’m proud that we were able to launch a state-of-the-art AI music generation product trained on licensed training data, sharing the revenue from the model with rights-holders. I’m grateful to my many colleagues who worked on this with me and who supported our team, and particularly to Emad for giving us the opportunity to build and ship it. I’m thankful for my time at Stability, and in many ways I think they take a more nuanced view on this topic than some of their competitors. But, despite this, I wasn’t able to change the prevailing opinion on fair use at the company. This was made clear when the US Copyright Office recently invited public comments on generative AI and copyright, and Stability was one of many AI companies to respond. Stability’s 23-page submission included this on its opening page: “We believe that Al development is an acceptable, transformative, and socially-beneficial use of existing content that is protected by fair use”. For those unfamiliar with ‘fair use’, this claims that training an AI model on copyrighted works doesn’t infringe the copyright in those works, so it can be done without permission, and without payment. This is a position that is fairly standard across many of the large generative AI companies, and other big tech companies building these models — it’s far from a view that is unique to Stability. But it’s a position I disagree with. I disagree because one of the factors affecting whether the act of copying is fair use, according to Congress, is “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work”. Today’s generative AI models can clearly be used to create works that compete with the copyrighted works they are trained on. So I don’t see how using copyrighted works to train generative AI models of this nature can be considered fair use. But setting aside the fair use argument for a moment — since ‘fair use’ wasn’t designed with generative AI in mind — training generative AI models in this way is, to me, wrong. Companies worth billions of dollars are, without permission, training generative AI models on creators’ works, which are then being used to create new content that in many cases can compete with the original works. I don’t see how this can be acceptable in a society that has set up the economics of the creative arts such that creators rely on copyright. To be clear, I’m a supporter of generative AI. It will have many benefits — that’s why I’ve worked on it for 13 years. But I can only support generative AI that doesn’t exploit creators by training models — which may replace them — on their work without permission. I’m sure I’m not the only person inside these generative AI companies who doesn’t think the claim of ‘fair use’ is fair to creators. I hope others will speak up, either internally or in public, so that companies realise that exploiting creators can’t be the long-term solution in generative AI.

Hi, Twitter! Are you still there...? More exciting old game news this week: Day of the Tentacle's 30th anniversary. If you're a fan and looking for an in-depth, 2-hour documentary on the making of the game (and who isn't), here you go. youtube.com/watch?v=IhbZCqhn…

This is our first book mostly presented in the oral history format, as told by the team that made the game: @TimOfLegend, @phrenopolis, @larry_ahern, Peter Chan, and @peternmcconnell. And it features a foreword by Larry Ahern himself!

Hey, they wrote a book about that crazy old game we made! Hope it’s not too forward of me to share and suggest you back the Kickstarter.

I think 25 is the peg leg anniversary.

If AI-generated art were generated purely off public-domain works, licensed art and stock imagery, this would be a different conversation. But the current model of data collection is parasitic in a way that ultimately kills its host. 🧵1/

Support your local amazing Monkey Island book. Okay, this one’s actually originally from France, but sometimes that’s where you gotta go for the goods.

Something that needs saying more frequently is that fossil fuel use is ending soon, one way or another. Either via cataclysm or via sensible collective choice. So stop saying "But what will we ever do without fossil fuels?" Plus have a little more faith in human ingenuity

Look what I found on display at Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture! #thatbelongsinamuseum

In case we don’t talk here enough already about that old game we made…

My Son says his favorite character is "Uncle Chuck" 😂

Kids playing the Monkey Island theme - so awesome!

What’s the story behind the discovery of The Gone Jackals @PeterNMcConnell? Was it more of the usual video game rock and roll debauchery?

I’m actually not expecting Elon to change much here. Other than renaming it Tw-æ-x-aXIIIter.

So THAT’S what it was like making the game…

Thank you to everyone who voted! I promise not to slap anyone at the ceremony.