Matt Connarton Unleashed: Deepfakes

0:00 Speaker 1: There's another article here from Billboard dot com. New Senate bill could protect artists from AI deep fakes. And this is of course part of our ongoing discussions about AI. We discussed it a lot on the show, but also the music industry is having an ongoing discussion about it. And this is called the No Fakes Act, first introduced as a draft bill last October, aims to provide federal protection on one's voice and likeness for the first time. And this is something you know something about from your own experience as a state legislator.

0:35 Speaker 2: Yes, I've worked on this issue specifically.

0:38 Speaker 1: It says here. A bipartisan group of US Senators introduced the highly anticipated No Fakes Act on July thirty one, which aims to protect artists and others from AI deep fakes and other non consensual replicas of their voices, images, and likeness. If passed, the legislation would create federal intellectual property for detections for the so called right of publicity for the first time, which restricts how someone's name, image, likeness in voice can be used without consent. Currently, such rights are only protected at the state level, leading to a patchwork of different rules across the country.

1:16 Speaker 1: Unlike many existing state loss systems, the federal right, Yes, the federal right that the No Fakes Act would create would not expire at death and could be controlled by a person's heirs for seventy years after their passing. The balance personal publicity rights, I'm sorry, to balance personal publicity rights and the First Amendment right to free speech. The No Fakes Act also includes specific carve outs for replicas used in news coverage, parody, historical works, or criticism. Now, yes, yeah, tell us about your experience with the bill about JD.

1:54 Speaker 1: Salinger.

1:55 Speaker 3: Right, So this in the articles one hundred percent correct. The laws are patchwork across the nation. Here in New Hampshire, as an artist, you have the right to protect your image and your likeness until you die. The moment that you did, you have no protections anymore, nor does your family. Nobody can control that or take ownership over your likeness. It becomes fair game. So what happened in New Hampshire is JD. Salinger's family has tried to protect his image. You know, Catcher in the Rye, famous American author.

2:28 Speaker 3: And there's a place, it's like a store or something that's near where the Salinger family. It has been in New Hampshire and they put JD. Salinger's face on toilet paper something wasn't too happy about that.

2:43 Speaker 2: I don't blame him, but.

2:44 Speaker 3: They were putting dad's face on things that weren't very respectable and they weren't happy about it, and they wanted to have control over their dad's image. But New Hampshire law didn't allow it. So the effort was to change the law to allow that to happen, because it does exist in many, many, many other states. California, it's a hundred years, so it's that patchwork. So what I say years, I'm talking about when you die, so you are you are a public persona you Matt Connorton on this show. In theory, you would have the ability to control your image up until the point that you die.

3:21 Speaker 3: In some states, when you die, whoever is your bequeathed or you're next to kin has the right to continue that control over your image, your likeness, your voice for a certain amount of time. In legislature, it's usually been around lifetime, thinking basically like we want your kids and your grandkids to be able to control your image. But after that it's been enough. But still allowing for people to be criticized or be satired, so narrowing the intent of the bill of that control like it is in other states.

3:56 Speaker 3: We got a lot of pushback trying to do this, like this was a huge fight, a bigger fight than I ever thought it would be. And I did manage to get it out of committee and I almost got it passed into the law, but the Republicans on the House side would not have it and trashed it because I was in a supermajority at the time as a Republican. Mind you, they wanted industries to be able to utilize people however they wanted to. And my argument was, if you look at the New Hampshire State House, it's across the street from an adult store.

4:28 Speaker 3: So I would give the example of you know, you die and the next day your kids see your face on an adult toy in the adult store being advertised in the window.

4:38 Speaker 2: How do you feel about that? Should that be allowed?

4:41 Speaker 3: Should a pub person's image belong ownership of that image belong to the next of ken? I think it should. I believe it should. You're a public figure, you're making money off of your image, you have created a brand of you, and you should be able to becreath that brand to your next to kin. In my opinion, this law gets into that because now it has to. Now we're adding this whole new animal into the mixture of AI and the ability to mimic people, to pretend to be people, to convince people that that really is that person.

5:15 Speaker 3: These deep fakes are pretty bad, Like you really can't necessarily tell the difference between one person or another. You could take somebody's image that you love and means the world to you and have them say the most horrific things and have no control over that, or we allow that to be controlled. I think you should be able to do that, and that's what I advocated for, and that's what I fought for. Unfortunately, the bill died thanks to House Republicans because the Senate was ready to pass it. The Salinger family is very respected in New Hampshire and we usually take pride in our in our in our in the successes that come out of our state.

5:51 Speaker 3: J. D. Salander is one of the most amazing American writers that is known throughout our country and around the world for or his Fourth Catcher in the Ryan his works. So you see what I'm saying about but.

6:05 Speaker 1: It gets so these things do get complicated though, because he do. Because so this happened a few months ago and we never got to it on the show. But do you remember the Scarlett Johansson thing. Yes, it was in the news. Yes, I found an article from the Hollywood Reporter. Again, this is from a few months ago. But Scarlett Johansson's AI legal threat set stage for actors battle with tech giants. So here's what this was about. Artists. This is a little bit of a side street, but it's relevant. So artists were first to sue.

6:40 Speaker 1: Then authors hit generative artificial intelligence companies with a valley of lawsuits, followed by publications. As battle lines over the use of AI tools in Hollywood are being drawn, actors maybe the next group of creators to open another front in what would be an industry defining legal battle against AI firms over the use of copyrighted works in personal data to power their human mimicking chat bots. On Monday, and again this is from the end of May, Scarlett Johansson threatened legal action against open ai, which is who created chat gpt, for allegedly copying and limiting I'm sorry imitating her voice after she refused to license it to the company.

7:23 Speaker 1: According to the actress, Open Ai asks her to be one of the voices called Sky for its newest AI system. She declined, though she said that didn't stop chief executive Sam Altman.

7:39 Speaker 3: And that's part of it right there, like for example, sports heroes in games and making sure that they have control over that imaging and that money in a game. Yeah, so that's where this legislation.

7:53 Speaker 1: But here's here's the problem though. Well, okay, so this is what she said in her statement, and then I'm gonna play Devil's advocate as I like to do because this because I when I first heard this, I was very skeptical that she had a case. Okay, so she wrote in a statement, quote, when I heard the released demo, I was shocked, angered, and in disbelief that mister Altman would pursue a voice that sounded so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.

8:24 Speaker 1: Unquote. Okay, here's the problem. So from her perspective, so she feels they asked her, she said no, So they just generated a voice that sounded.

8:37 Speaker 2: Well, we'll go to court and deal with it in court, but we got it.

8:40 Speaker 1: But here's the problem. What did they Does Scarlett Johanson have such a distinct voice? Is there no one else who sounds like her? I?

8:50 Speaker 3: Ah, yeah, come on, now, come on, we want you to be our voice.

8:55 Speaker 2: We want you to be a voice. No no, no no no, So we make one up that sounds just like you.

8:59 Speaker 1: Come on if I if so, if I go and hear this, am I going to say? Oh, that's Scarlett Johansson?

9:09 Speaker 3: I mean according to her, she's saying yes, she's saying that news to her. According to her, So who are these news outlets and did they really feel that way and contact her?

9:20 Speaker 2: If that is true, then she absolutely has a case.

9:24 Speaker 1: I'm very skeptical.

9:25 Speaker 3: The thing is, even even the Motion Picture Association is getting in behind this bill.

9:29 Speaker 2: And I do want to say one thing about the bill.

9:32 Speaker 3: Senator Blackburn is on it, who's a Republican, and Senator Clovisha and Senator they So this bill is bipartisan in effort to try and protect artists, athletes, people who have a public persona from being turned into some kind of an AI.

9:52 Speaker 1: Now, and you know, I'll always advocate on the side of artists at the end of the day. But I'm just saying though from a pra again from a practice and pragmatic standpoint. So if somebody sounds like you, now you can go and get suit film.

10:07 Speaker 3: If this suit, if this actually sounds a lot like her, or sounds like her period after them turn after she turned them down, that's that's not coincidental.

10:21 Speaker 2: That's not a coincidence. That's intention. But they're gonna get.

10:25 Speaker 3: What they wanted because they figure tied up in court, they get away with it.

10:29 Speaker 2: But who they get away with it?

10:31 Speaker 1: But who's to say.

10:33 Speaker 3: Unless she gets a stay of some kind and some kind of emergency injunction to stop them from using it. They're getting to utilize it while you're going through court.

10:43 Speaker 1: But so this company though, so because that conversation was had with Scarlett Johansson, now this company can never ever use any voice that might.

10:56 Speaker 2: Sound like yeah, I'm gonna say yes.

11:00 Speaker 1: See that to me sounds.

11:01 Speaker 3: If it sounds just like her, like you can't tell the difference. No, they shouldn't be able to.

11:07 Speaker 1: There's not another actor somewhere who has a voice like her. What is so distinct about her voice?

11:14 Speaker 3: If it sounds just like her and you can't tell the difference. After they went to her trying to get usage and she said, no, I don't know. We have to put some kind of limitations on AI or it will run rampant. Where is your line, Where is your line in the stand that you're protecting the artist?

11:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, but I do think there's I do think there's the uh. And this is why I bring this up. I do think there's the risk of abuse in the other direction.

11:39 Speaker 3: Man, there is, which is why this is why this Yeah, and it's why these kinds of laws are difficult to pass because you do have to narrow the scope because you still have to allow for perspective, sorry, for protected speech. You've got to allow for There's got to be you know, we have to be able to have sat tire of people.

11:57 Speaker 2: We have to be able to.

11:59 Speaker 1: Well that that's the right thing about That's a big thing.

12:02 Speaker 2: I'm worried about is part of But that's been done. It's done in many places.

12:06 Speaker 1: Because satirical works are generally protected and that's already and I'm worried about that no longer.

12:12 Speaker 3: There's a lot, but it's already been on the books for forever, especially in California, there's laws on the books that protect artists but allow for satire. California protects your image for one hundred years after your death. Some states are seventy five. New Hampshire is no time. New Hampshire is you're dead, You're done. Your family doesn't get to control it. You show up in the middle of some adult stores window too bad, too sad, don't show your kids.

12:38 Speaker 2: I don't like that.

12:40 Speaker 3: I think people should be able to control their image, their persona, and when they die that shouldn't just die with them if they you know you're you are a commodity of your own, and you've established this commodity. You get to bequeath that to whoever you wish, and they get to contain that ownership for however many years the law allows. But like our state doesn't. Our state gives no protection at awe when death happens.

13:07 Speaker 2: This law is going way, This law has to happen. This stuff has to happen.

13:13 Speaker 3: AI is exponentially growing on a daily basis. Let's face it, technology is amazing. It grows every day. There's good and bad about it. The ability to mimic someone's image, likeness, voice, there's a lot of danger involved in that. There's a lot of nasty, underground, criminal things that can be done with that, you know.

13:33 Speaker 2: I mean, I worry.

13:33 Speaker 3: About that somebody puts a video of somebody making it look like they've committed a crime, that person goes to jail. This kind of technology can be so horrifically abused that if we don't put safeguards now, it's going to be too late when it's out of the box.

13:53 Speaker 1: For all you know, I might not really be here. I could be a deep fake.

13:56 Speaker 2: Well I know, because I'm here.

13:58 Speaker 1: Oh that's true.

14:00 Speaker 2: Listeners could be listening to two deep pakes.

14:02 Speaker 1: They could be listening to an AI generated version of the show.

14:05 Speaker 2: Maybe we're not here, maybe we're in Aruba.

14:07 Speaker 1: I do want to do that sometime. I think it'd be fun make an AI generated version of the show, just to see what it comes up with. They did that once on The Howard Stern Show. It's pretty well the conversation between Howard and Robin and the AI version that they did. It was funny because it was so it was so it was like, you know, Howard's like asking Robin, Robin, how was your weekend? And Robin's like mine was good, Howard, how was you know, It's just like a conversation they would never have, but it was like it was the best that the AI could come up with.

14:35 Speaker 3: There is an organization called their Human Artistry Campaign that's out there that's actually trying to work on these issues to protect artists. We're talking about When you talk about artis you talk about everybody. We're talking about music, actors, painters, everyone. If we I'm serious, Like, so, I want to know from you, Devil's Advocate, where's your line where is it that we are protecting? Where do you put that line to protect the artists?

15:03 Speaker 1: Well, I don't know. I mean, that's that's the thing we're kind of That's what's so fascinating about the subject to me is it's it's complicated. It's it's complex, and we're kind of trying to find our way through it. Now. I do tend to be I might be lenient on a lot of this, though I might have an internal bias because so you know, I'm a co host on Retrospect and Radio with Polic on Friday nights, and one of the things that one of the uh, if you've never heard the show, every week Paul picks a different subject, and one of the subjects that we've done a few times that Paul has shows in his plagiarism where he'll play a song and then yeah, and then it's a song where there was some sort of perhaps someone said, hey, they you stole my song.

15:50 Speaker 1: I'm going to sue you, and there was litigation or the threat of litigation or just accusations of plagiarism and so forth. Led Zeppelin, by the way, the most plagiaristic band ever. But when we're when Paul plays these examples for us, I'm usually the one in the room who says not guilty. I'm like, I'm the most lenient when it comes to these accusations of plagiarism, because I'm the guy who says, yeah, I know that song sounds like this other song, but that's because it's using a chord progression that is very common in rock music and shows up in a lot of songs.

16:25 Speaker 1: I'm the most lenient one. So maybe maybe because I tend to maybe maybe I have an internal bias that's making me say, hey, let's be a little bit careful about what we assume that's different is copying something else?

16:38 Speaker 3: I want to challenge you on that. That's different because you're comparing what's coming out of a human mind to a computer pretending to be somebody else.

16:47 Speaker 1: But what is the same is this notion of copying, this notion of hearing something or reading the data of something. However, you want to think about it the way a large learning model works machine learning. The part that's similar is taking something and replicating it in some.

17:05 Speaker 3: Way, true, but without the human element. And that's that's a big difference. There's the difference between the human being and the computer.

17:14 Speaker 1: Well, but it depends on the situation, right, I mean, if I take a if I take somebody else's song and I just basically copy it and I barely change it, and I've plagiarized it, that's actually worse.

17:24 Speaker 2: Than that plagiarism not a deep fake, right.

17:27 Speaker 1: No, But I'm just saying, though, that's actually worse than if I type an AI prompt and I say make a song that kind of sounds like this.

17:33 Speaker 3: Yeah, No, that is worse because it's a direct right copyright. Who's the Who's the rapper that did that? With David Bowie's song Queen under Pressure? Who's stole from under pressure. Vanilla Vanilla ice, that's what it was. Yeah, yep, but see that's that's plagiarism. That's stealing somebody's work.

17:54 Speaker 1: Well that's not technically, it's not plagiarism. It's it's a it's ample, it's an unclear sample. Yeah, because he didn't ask permission and then he got held over a balcony by Suge Knight. It's a whole thing. Geez, we can do a whole show about vanilla Ice. What a fascinating man.

18:09 Speaker 2: This is true. Yes, but you don't want to anger anyone.

18:12 Speaker 1: No, that's true. We don't want Sugar Knight to come and hurt me.

18:15 Speaker 3: Hang you over or we do have a balcony. Yes, he could hang you over a balcony by your ankles.

18:20 Speaker 2: That would be terrible. Well, it's it's a very I mean, I support the effort. I think this bill should pass. I think it should be long.

18:29 Speaker 3: I think there should be protections against We have to start. If we don't, we're already kind of late to the late to the Gamia.

18:38 Speaker 2: We need these.

18:39 Speaker 3: Laws on the books like yesterday. Because technology grows and leaps and bounds by the day, AI especially, we don't we need we need this stuff now right, not before before it gets too far out of the bag. But you know, I'm sorry, but I still I have to disagree with you on Johansson issue. She was approached, she was asked, they wanted her, they courted her, she said no. Then they created something that sounded just like her. Yeah, I don't, I don't see.

19:10 Speaker 1: I don't even know, though, I would have to hear it and make my own determination to really have an opinion a hundred, which I have not. It's like with the George Carlin thing. Remember all these guys who made an AI version of a George Carlin album, a new George Carlin album. Yeah, And I remember I played a little bit of it on the show that and and well I ended up listening to the entire hour, and I thought it was good. I actually thought it was funny. And George Carland's one of my all time favorite Duck comedians, of course.

19:42 Speaker 1: But but I remember saying to you, Jesse was with us on the show that day, and I remember saying, my observation was, you know, yeah, it sounds a lot like him, but not exactly. And if you were to play this for me, and I'm sure it's still on YouTube. If you don't know what we're talking about, just look up George Carlin AI. You'll find it and it's actually funny, like the jokes are good. But I'm skeptical that it's all AI generated because some of those jokes don't sound like they could have been generated by AI.

20:10 Speaker 1: They're actually too clever. But but I remember saying to you and Jesse that if you, if you just played this for me and said to me, didn't tell me anything about it, and just said, Matt, who is this comedian? Do you recognize this? I might say it reminds me of George Carlin, or it kind of sounds like George Carlin. I would not say, oh, that's George Carlin.

20:29 Speaker 2: Well guess, because you know he's dead.

20:31 Speaker 1: No, no, no, But I'm just saying. I'm saying, if if, if you, if you.

20:34 Speaker 2: Just played that for me, you would have it out right away and.

20:37 Speaker 1: Tell me anything about it. I I probably would have said it reminds me of George Carlin, but I would not have said that's George Carlin because it didn't sound enough like him to me. The AI version.

20:47 Speaker 2: That's one example.

20:48 Speaker 1: It is, It's just one example. It's anecdotal, but I'm just saying I would have to hear the the Scarlett Johanson which is not which is not available. They they took it down, avoided a lawsuit, and all of that. That's all been saying.

21:03 Speaker 2: So you in favor or opposed to the legislation.

21:08 Speaker 1: I'm generally in favor of protecting artists. I don't know enough about exactly what the legislation is to really have a firm opinion, but I'm generally in favor of protecting artists. At the end of the day, I will always advocate on behalf of artists. Having said that, I'm also always worried about abuse, I will say, and frivolous lawsuits and all of that.

21:27 Speaker 3: There are a whole host of organizations that agree with you, that are representing artists. Organizations like the Nashville Songwriters' Association or the Production Music Association, the Recording Academy are all joining together in support of this bipartisan legislation, which is nice to see. I just hope that the sun doesn't sit on it forever and that they actually do get it passed into.

21:49 Speaker 2: Law sooner rather than later.

21:51 Speaker 3: To protect artists is not artists, culture, art everything needs to be protected from AI. It really does. If we don't get these laws in place now, it's just going to be too late. And I really do think there needs to be laws, and especially in regards to deep fakes,

22:13 Speaker 3: perhaps