Aug 2023 Newsletter – The Rise of Artificial Intellengence

The Rise of Artificial Intelligence

In the past few years, the use of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) has been on the rise. AI is the intelligence of machines or software as opposed to the intelligence of human beings or animals.  We’ve seen an upswing in the use of ChatGTP as well as a rise in “deep fakes” on the internet.  While AI may be beneficial in certain arenas and aspects, it can be detrimental in many other areas.  For example, someone could create a deep fake of you and post fake images on the internet of you which purport to show you engaging in illicit activities, and that could damage your reputation and cost you money in the long run.  Another example is using ChatGTP to draft important documents, such as attorneys using it to draft legal pleadings (recently several attorneys have been reprimanded by judges in court for using ChatGTP to draft pleadings and failing to review and check what was written).  The aforementioned attorneys failed to perform due diligence and review the cases cited by ChatGTP.  This was negligence on their part, for a multitude of reasons, but specifically because a number of cases cited by ChatGTP in the legal pleadings did not even exist.  This goes to show that advances in AI must be used with caution.

Another use of AI that has been featured significantly in the news lately relates to the use of actors’ images, through AI, in perpetuity by production companies.  These types of clauses have recently begun to pop up in contracts for acting roles.  In practice, a small background actor would essentially be giving up any future background acting roles in favor of production companies using the actor’s AI generated likeness in all future productions instead of the actual actor.  An unsuspecting background actor might not have an attorney review his/her contract and would unknowingly sign away his/her rights and many potential future acting jobs.  This issue is one of the main focuses of the current SAG-AFTRA strike.

This is a new and emerging area of law and developments are occurring daily.  Many different state legislatures are exploring ways to utilize, regulate, and manage the implications of AI on their constituents. In fact, the traditional goals of AI research include reasoning, knowledge representation, planning, learnings, natural language processing, perception, and support for robotics. AI also draws upon psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience and many other fields.

Our office is continuing to monitor developments in AI technology, regulation and use so that we can protect our clients from any pitfalls and help our clients maximize the benefits that they may see from using new emerging AI technologies.