How creators and marketers can protect themselves while using AI

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How creators and marketers can protect themselves while using AI

The following is a guest piece by Jordan Mitchell, founder of integrated communications and content agency Growth Stack Media. Opinions are the author’s own.

Throughout my career, I have witnessed the challenges content creators face when striving to make a living pursuing their passion. While honing technical skills and storytelling abilities is crucial, it is equally important for creators to understand the business side of the creative marketing industry.

As emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) become powerful enough to replicate human voices without consent or create stunning visual short films that would take skilled professionals significantly more time and resources to produce, the importance of proper attribution and collaboration between creators and the marketers who partner with them grows.

While legislation like the NO FAKES Act is being rolled out, I don’t believe it’s enough to protect the integrity of branded content, be it generated by an individual creator, a marketer’s internal team or a creative agency. To fill in the gaps, here are my tips on ways creators and marketers can protect their rights while leveraging AI tools effectively and position themselves for success in this new era.

Collaborate closely

Establish clear guidelines for content usage and attribution. Maintain open communication to ensure all parties understand and agree to the terms of use.

Clearly define the scope of work from the outset to establish a mutual understanding of the deliverables. If the client is only paying for specific content deliverables, creators are not obligated to provide source files or raw materials. It’s important to align on how the content will be used, where it will be distributed and the licensing requirements.

Here’s why: If a creator delivers the approved, final assets and the client starts making edits independently, it can be considered a breach of the agreement. They should be paying the creator for those use cases, and it’s not recommended because they may lack the technical skills to maintain the integrity of your content if they make further adjustments.

It’s also important to discuss plans for distribution and specifically request that the client tags you in social media posts when promoting the content externally. If they don’t, that’s okay, tell them that you’d like to plan to reshare their content on your channels at a future date if they are comfortable with it and leverage the work you created for them as part of your portfolio.

If your deliverables will be used for internal purposes or specific offline use cases, ensure that the proper paperwork is in place, such as a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to avoid confusion down the road. This applies to all forms of digital media.

Include clauses specifying that the creator must be credited, regardless of how their work is used. Negotiate for royalties or other forms of compensation when work is used in AI training or other derivative works.

Leverage technology

To ensure the protection of your exported content, it is important to utilize the available tools in addition to contracts. Make it a priority to include metadata in all exported assets, as this allows for the encryption and embedding of your information directly within the media file itself.

Content credential initiatives like TikTok’s partnership with Adobe are a step in the right direction, but they can’t prevent watermark removal and AI manipulation. Watermarks are easily removed with freely available editing tools and AI can change videos in ways that make tracing the original source extremely difficult.

While there’s no one, perfect solution, blockchain technology shows a lot of promise. By using the blockchain to track the origin and ownership of content, creators can establish a transparent record of their work that’s far harder to alter than traditional methods.

This is already happening with NFTs, which have helped creators protect their digital works by proving ownership and preventing unauthorized duplication. If similar blockchain-based solutions were applied to other types of content, it could help ensure that creators are credited when their work is used.

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