Here is a news roundup for July and August presented by your friendly NOPL librarian, Erin, the Branch Manager of NOPL Brewerton.
First up, the U.S. Copyright Office has released a report on AI focusing on deepfakes, which calls for updated legislation to address this use of AI to create these “sophisticated digital replicas” of people, usually celebrities or politicians. Earlier this month, the NO FAKES act was introduced in the Senate that, according to this article for Publisher’s Weekly, creates a new right “to authorize the use of image, voice, or visual likeness of the individual in a digital replica.”
I am hopeful that the NO FAKES act or similar legislation will help combat the unauthorized use of people’s voices, images of faces and hands, or other visual likeness. This type of legislation becomes more vital each day as “AI” media generators are getting more and more accurate and convincing. As just one example, the FLUX image generator is now great at depicting human hands—a previously used sign of computer-generated people was “weird” hands. On a related note, as reported by Samuel Axon in this article, the creators of ChatGPT , a text generation AI tool, have the ability to watermark the text generated by ChatGPT to make it easy to tell if text was created by AI (with 99.9% accuracy, according to Axon’s sources). However, they are not releasing this feature. Some of the reasons given for this reluctance include that it is easy to bypass, many users are likely to stop using ChatGPT if watermarking is implemented, and 99.9% accuracy is not good enough for the OpenAI creators at this time.
In addition to lawmakers, librarians are also offering strategies to combat misinformation stemming from advances in AI technology. Three academic librarians and professors collaborated on this article, titled “Verifying facts in the age of AI – librarians offer 5 strategies.” The strategies are common-sense: Research the platform – author or organization – to uncover any biases, missing credentials, or questionable affiliations; Use good searching strategies (the article has a lot of suggestions); Verify the source–are the bases for the arguments being presented quoted correctly and accurately?; Use fact-checking websites such as influencewatch.org, poynter.org, or snopes.com to corroborate assertions in the information presented; and Pause and reflect, check to see if your emotions are being triggered to make you believe what is being presented (a common misinformation strategy). Stay safe out there!
Returning once more to legislation, there are two conflicting viewpoints about how free information should be. The first references KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. Critics are concerned about the sweeping powers this act would give to the FTC and local attorneys general to censor information on the internet, regardless of political leaning. Also, the New York Times has provided a comprehensive summary of book bans and censorship campaigns in schools and public libraries across the country. (OCPL patrons can receive a code to access New York Times articles online through a free account. Visit this link and click NYTimes Online Off-Site Access to read Times articles for free for 24 hours.)
To wrap up on a more lighthearted note, the Renee Renovates YouTube Channel has released a video showing how to make a cute, DIY, small front-yard book exchange and has provided plans if you want to make your own. If you do make one, let a librarian at NOPL Brewerton branch know so we can tell our patrons where to find it!
