In this installment of Let’s Talk, Chief Editor of Research Liz Forrey and Summer Social Media and Marketing Manager Maraika Lumholdt talk about what has been happening at the intersection of art and tech thus far in August. The conversation covers recent uses and developments with Dall-E and Crayion, how NFTs and apps like TikTiok are becoming relevant in the music industry, and how data privacy issues are already playing a big role in legal battles related to abortion in the United States.
The following articles are listed in order of discussion:
Maraika: [00:00:00] But in general, I think the rise of widely accessible AI generated art
has exploded this year. I'm sure you've, you've probably seen the Dall-e mini creations all over social media.
Elizabeth: Yes, the memes are crazy.
Maraika: yeah, they are so funny. Some of them are, are scarily accurate too,
Elizabeth: Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the let's talk series of the arts management and technology lab. The goal for our let's talk series is to exchange ideas, bring awareness and stay on top of the trends.
My name is Elizabeth. Forry the chief editor of research. And today I am joined by our summer social media and marketing manager, Maraika Lumholdt to talk about current news that has been happening this month of August, 2020.
The topics we'll cover are about AI generated art,the mix of NFTs and music platforms, as well as data privacy.
Maraika: So a story that I have been watching pretty closely is about a [00:01:00] company called hit piece. Have you heard of them?
Elizabeth: I actually have not. So do explain.
Maraika: Yeah. So earlier this year they were on my radar cuz they emerged as a new NFT platform, I think in February or March, that was specifically for buying and selling music NFT. So the NFT version of fav, you know, any favorite song, I think at one point they said they had.
But so the idea was anyone could go on pick their favorite song by the NFT of that. And in return, they'd also get some exclusive content to connect them to that artist. So HitPiece was really trying to create a community around recording artists.
So maybe you could get some kind of digital interaction with that artist or merch or something. think that's an interesting. Potential for NFTs to help create these kinds of digital communities and, and fandoms, but it was quickly found out that hit piece didn't actually have permission from the majority of the artists to be [00:02:00] posting those NFTs.
And I know that's a a huge turn cuz like anyone can make an NFT out of pretty much anything. And it's really hard to enforce copyright. So, this was obviously a huge miss in that regard. So they quickly got a ton of backlash from the music industry and the general public, some recording labels.
I think it was Columbia records, sent them a cease and desist. Like they got very close to being sued and getting in all kinds of legal trouble. And I think, mere weeks after they launched, they shut down operations and never to be heard from again or so we thought, and then just this month hit piece came back on the scene, except they're now trying to get around the criticism that they faced and operate in a way that is not violating copyright law.
And they're actually doing this with another web [00:03:00] three company. So there's this new company called audible magic, which leverages web three technology to run audio identification, essentially. So they have a database of songs that are tagged with all ownership and, and rights associated with them. And then they can automatically run that database against hit piece's, discography, or whatever you call the NFT version of that to flag which owners are assigned or, or which people have rights to each individual song.
And then this in theory will ensure that only legitimate content is then being distributed on the hit piece market. So I think it's interesting because in this case hit piece. Was a web three company that created a big problem in the beginning. And again, not unique to hit piece. I think we're seeing this in all kinds of, of NFT marketplaces, but also a web three [00:04:00] company.
Audible magic is the solution too. So it's simultaneously the, the root cause and the potential fix in this. So it is brand new. So I'm curious to see if this will actually work. I'm not quite sure exactly what other kinds of kinds of rules hit pieces is putting into place. Like if anyone can mint an NFT or if it has to be, you know, run through this audible magic, um, algorithm first.
So I'm curious, but I. In terms of copyright laws, they're definitely way behind on the NFT front, and a lot of other emerging technologies that did not exist when they were written many years ago. So it'll be interesting to see if in the meantime, while we're waiting for laws to catch up, if companies like audible magic are gonna be a solution to help in the meantime.
Elizabeth: Yeah, that's really interesting. I've [00:05:00] never heard of a company quite like Audible magic before. Um, which I think is a good thing, obviously, since the amount of copyright issues with NFTs have risen for, basically since their inception, but I'm also curious how hit piece is going to get around the, uh, previous backlash.
I don't know if many celebrities will feel called to, uh, or interested in, um, partnering because they've already had so manyissues.
Maraika: Yeah, I totally agree. I'm curious too. And it's again, I think an opportunity they have to help create is to help create those kind of fandoms and communities, which is a positive thing. But to your point, if that has potential risks with it, or, you know, they've oh, those artists have been scorned in the past.
We don't know.
Elizabeth: we'll see.
Maraika: Yeah.
Elizabeth: And [00:06:00] also just for an aside with the current NFT crypto market,
Maraika: Hmm. Oh yeah.
Elizabeth: will it even have the chance to get off its.
Maraika: Yeah, that is a great call. And that reminds me of another point of criticism with a lot of NFTs, which is the celebrity hype around them and celebrities, you know, taking advantage of their audience. So just as you said that the, I mean, this feels like a way that could naturally plan to that too.
Unfortunately. So hopefully that won't be the case, but we will see breaking news from hit piece so time will tell.
Elizabeth: This reminds me of another, um, recent article, uh, recent news in August, thus far, and that talks about TikTok and music as well. Um, As everybody knows, TikTok is a social media platform where there's a lot of video and audio and a big thing about it is like music on TikTok and a [00:07:00] lot of people are discovering new music from TikTok.
I think the majority of people, I don't have an exact statistic on that, but the majority of youth are getting a lot of hits and new songs from TikTok. And this TikTok currently has teamed up with Ticketmaster, um, and is launching a feature that allows. People to purchase tickets directly through the app, so it, it basically allows creators to search for events and link it to their videos. Um, and currently, however, the service is only limited to bigger artists, but also older like artists. So like the Demi Lavato, Usher, Backstreet boys, one Republic and so forth.
They have kind of had a bid to, um, have their music be featured or have their ticket links be featured. And, um, however TikTok plans to. Allow this in the future. And so this kind of all comes after ByteDance which is a parent company of TikTok. The [00:08:00] Chinese, digital media company, has filed a trademark application for this new platform, which is TikTok music, um, which where all this would be on, but it would be a direct competitor or Spotify, which we've seen.
Other competitors to Spotify kind of fizzle out. and Spotify has basically stayed the course for many, many years, but I'm interested to see since TikTok is such a big force in our world. If, if TikTok music will finally kind of overshadow, Spotify, I don't know that it will, but it might. Um, that's all we really know right now.
it's also interesting to note that this isn't the first social media app that, uh, Ticketmaster has partnered with, earlier in February, this year. So 2022, they announced their partnership with Snapchat, um, to do basically the same thing, not the same thing in the terms of
having a new [00:09:00] app, but rather to say, you can feature your music and buy from a direct to link on the platform and the discover page. And both partnerships have been told to have the aim of taking advantage of the discovery tools on the apps to help reach young audiences. So
Maraika: Wow.
Elizabeth: we'll see.
Maraika: Yeah, that is interesting. I guess it does make sense to meet people where they're at and where trends around music are starting, whether that's Snapchat or TikTok, I've been super fascinated to watch as TikTok has completely dominated. What ends up, you know, being in the top 40, the next week. It's crazy how fast things are moving now.
And I do think, I feel like there is a, a large celebrity like artist presence on those platforms too. So I guess it also makes sense to kind of keep it in that ecosystem where they're talking to fans and, and giving them content already.
Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely.
Maraika: So [00:10:00] interesting. how fast platforms shake up. I feel like Spotify still feels really new to me, but here we are.
Elizabeth: Yeah, right. Well, and it was interesting cause this article had talked about why Spotify is basically an unmovable force because they're just like so constant and they give the viewers or the listeners what they want. They give their constituents what they want. And that's why it's been so good. But TikTok has such a popularity that I wonder if that will overshadow the, the like unwavering normality of Spotify.
Maraika: Yeah. Yeah. That's an interesting, an interesting thought. And I think, I think both of them are so popular because of that recommendation algorithm. Right? Like they give you content without you having to ask. So you keep engaging.
Elizabeth: exactly. It's wild stuff.
Maraika: It is indeed. so something I've actually seen on [00:11:00] TikTok, which brings me to my next news story is AI generated art. I just saw on TikTok, there's a new filter where you can type, in some words, and an AI will generate art behind you as you're filming your video, which is pretty cool. But in general, I think the rise of widely accessible AI generated art has exploded this year. I'm sure you've, you've probably seen the Dall-e mini creations all over social media.
Elizabeth: Yes, the memes are crazy.
Maraika: yeah, they are so funny. Some of them are, are scarily accurate too, which is wild. And, and one of the things that I'll get to in a minute, but so Dall-e mini is actually now called Crayion, cuz they're not trying to be associated with Dall-E which is this bigger, AI image generator run by a company called Open AI and Open AI launched Dall-E in a, not even a beta phase, whatever is before beta, a really small test [00:12:00] phase, and only a limited number of people had access to this. And I think those people were primarily, you know, like researchers and people who are in relevant career fields around this definitely not accessible to the public.
And that is why Crayion, formerly known as Dall-e mini, came to be. So the public could have access to similar technology. It wasn't quite as good as the actual open AI Dall-e generator, but, but something similar. However, very recently Dall-e opened up or excuse me, Open AI opened up Dall-E to, I think it was a million more users from their waiting list.
So although a million is still, definitely not the general public, that's a much larger number of people that now have access to this image generator that didn't before. So now they're officially in their beta stage. And this means that more people are getting access. More people can start using this.
[00:13:00] We've already seen this have different uses now because of how many more people can use it. So. It's more accessible, but it's also more practical in terms of, of use cases. So I think one fun, one that I just saw was Heinz the condiment company from our, you know, hometown of Pittsburgh, used Dall-E to create the key art for its ad campaign.
So they, yeah, they launched some pretty cool imagery. I'm not sure if it'll end up on posters or something, but for now, it's just shared by Hines online. Um, of, you know, ketchup bottles and other things, but it was all created by Dall-E and it totally looks like an ad that they would pay an ad agency to make so really effective in that way.
And obviously very practical in this commercial sense of using it. Yeah. So I'm curious to see of, of these million people, if there are other brands or, or [00:14:00] people that might use it for, uh, a more practical purpose rather than what I use the Dall-E mini slash Crayion for, which is just entertainment and making funny, funny images.
But I think it also raises it also raises an important question about what bad actors might do with this. I read that the reason that open AI was so hesitant to roll this out to a lot of people at the beginning was because it's really easy to use an AI image generator to spread misinformation, right?
Like it's literally creating deep fakes, essentially. You're creating an image of something that has never actually happened. And as the AI gets more sophisticated and more realistic who's to say that someone wouldn't believe whatever image they're looking at, if it's portraying something that didn't happen for the intent of spreading misinformation.
So. That is definitely a risk. And I think open AI has responded already in anticipation of this by banning [00:15:00] certain words as inputs for images to be generated. So things that are around like explicit content themes. I think I also saw that they're not allowing people to use real people as inputs. I'm not quite sure.
They're gonna identify real people who aren't perhaps celebrities, you know, who are in news headlines. I'm not sure if they have a database of every single person's name in the world, which would also be concerning,
Elizabeth: A privacy problem.
Maraika: Yeah. So we'll see if that is an effective way to combat some of that, but that certainly is a concern.
Otherwise it is really fun and I hope to see more of the fun. Not, not threatening ways of how it's gonna be used. Um, but for now I will continue using Crayion since I do not have access yet to the real Dall-E
Elizabeth: crayion is so fun. It is hilarious.
Maraika: Good stuff.
Elizabeth: It is, it was funny cuz I didn't realize it was [00:16:00] Dall-E mini wasn't part of Dall-E um, which, so I'm glad they changed that. But it's crazy how sophisticated AI art specifically is
getting. Um, and to the point of the deep fakes, it's a, like, it's a huge issue. And I, I remember also reading this article and the fact that. You know, the creators of open AI who have basically said we've put these things in place, but. Who we are. We're, we're pretty worried that, you know, it's just a matter of time. It's inevitable that people are gonna find a way around these bans on words and themes and things. Um, and there's already been issues with deep fakes.
Like the, I think it was last year, two years ago, there was a woman who. Basically made deep fakes, of two girls on the cheerleading team with her daughter that were like explicit. Um, they were doing explicit things, [00:17:00] uh, to get them in trouble for whatever stupid reason
Maraika: Yeah. Yeah. It is really scary to think about that is definitely a huge concern. And I know everyone keeps saying, we've said since the beginning, don't believe everything you see on the internet, but that's gonna be harder to remind yourself of when things look like a photo someone took, even though it was an AI-generated image. Wild.
Elizabeth: Yeah, absolutely. But I guess for now it is a fun, the Crayion at least is a fun little. Fun little tool you could use to make your memes.
Maraika: yes. I'll keep using it that way.
Elizabeth: similar to, Kind of the, uh, more doom and gloom side of things and, and believability and privacy and all of that, as we know, in the United States, Roe versus Wade was, uh, undone by the Supreme court. And a big concern was besides the [00:18:00] hundreds of other concerns that come with that, um, was data privacy.
And okay. If now abortion is illegal, what is the role of tech companies in, you know, in this, in digital privacy, in, in surveillance, um, in letting people know, you know, how do you, when people message about things like will tech companies give up that information or not. They have been pretty silent on the subject, but their actions are quite telling.
Um, so recently, a 17 year old and her mother in Nebraska have been charged with multiple felonies and misdemeanors. Based on her private Facebook messages. and the messages were obtained by the state government, from a Facebook court order. basically. To give context of Nebraska while things haven't totally changed in Nebraska in terms of lawsuits, because [00:19:00] it's not federally legal anymore or federally, not, not legal, but it's up to the states at this point, the federal government has no say, um, they, this family cannot take basically take them to court, um, or be protected on the federal level. So Nebraska has a 20 week post fertilization abortion ban. Um, which basically means this doesn't change. So it just means like after 20 weeks you can't have an abortion, you can't do anything. You just have to keep the baby. And no matter what circumstance, I think, unless it's like extreme health concern, um, to the carrier, And basically The 17 year old girl allegedly had discussed and obtained the, um, abortion pill. And because of this, she's been charged with five crimes and I'm gonna quote this directly from Vice. This is where the articles from, and this is the following words I'm going to be saying from, um, Vice [00:20:00] says:
"Jessica Burgess is charged with five crimes, three felonies, including perform or attempt abortion over 20 weeks. Perform abortion by a non-licensed doctor and removing /concealing, a dead human body. Uh, Celeste discharged with one felony removing concealing, abandoning a dead human body in two misdemeanors, concealing the death of another person in false reporting. She is being tried as an adult."
So the reason why she's able to be tried this way is, and this is where tech comes into play. Is that basically in June, as I had mentioned earlier with the court order, the state submitted a search warrant to Meta, which demanded that all private data, including DMS of the Burgess were obtained and these DMs were used
for the support to seize 13 laptops smartphones and 24 gigabytes of data from the family, the entire family,
Maraika: Wow.
Elizabeth: Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. Which [00:21:00] includes messages, images and web history. and as I mentioned earlier, tech companies have been quiet. They've always declined to say if they would give law enforcement private info regarding abortion.
Uh, but it's clear that they will, however, it is important to note, um, Meta, since the news has gotten out, I believe it's because it was released and it wasn't confidential anymore, which that is fair. I get it. You don't also wanna get in trouble with the government with Meta's other troubles because you totally like ignored confidentiality.
Um, but they, but since the news has gotten out, they have stated the warrants had no mention of abortion rather that they were requested as needed for a quote "criminal investigation."
Maraika: Hmm.
Elizabeth: Yeah. So. There's a lot of layers to that. And also the fact that having an abortion is under the guise of a criminal investigation is very, uh, concerning.
Maraika: Yeah. [00:22:00] Yeah. That's wild. I think we've seen this kind of concern come up while Roe was still intact. Like, I can't remember the case when the FBI or some or some federal authority was trying to get into an iPhone. And Apple was refusing to unlock it. I think that's been a popular thing. They've done that a few times, but now, now post Roe it's even more.
concerning, as you were saying in, in the way that now these are considered criminal cases and what that means. I just think it, it feels like it affects so many, of course it affects so many more people. Um, now in the U.S. versus before I think at least, you know, when I was hearing about those Apple stories, I was like, oh yeah, technology companies know everything about us, but I have nothing to hide.
I'm not like committing major federal offenses at the time, but now what can is [00:23:00] considered a federal offense is a lot.
Elizabeth: Your human rights.
Maraika: Yeah. Literally human rights.
Elizabeth: Yeah.
It's a lot too, because you think like people are outraged. And I mean, I am too, but you know, they're like, why would you, you know, this is such a breach of privacy and whatever, but this is the whole problem we have with data privacy.
Like none of these companies are required to protect you and I hate to be like that, but it's the truth. I mean, we would hope that. People in charge of these organizations had a soul and had morality and would say, you know, the money may be here or I might get on worse terms with so whoever, but I need to protect like the people, but also these are trillion dollar organizations, billionaires are on them.
And. You know, currently in big tech organizations like Meta they're already under [00:24:00] such such a fire from the government because of other issues with data privacy and because of monopolistic tendencies, of course they're gonna comply cuz they don't wanna get into more hot water.
Maraika: mm-hmm
Elizabeth: That's just my, my personal look at the situation. But so when it comes to cases like this, it it's kind of like a, of course, why would they protect citizens?
Maraika: Yeah. Yeah. Sadly, I, I think you're right. That makes sense. In terms of how our, capitalist society works and how big tech will continue to, to do what they can to just keep making money, whatever that takes. So, yeah, I, I feel you and agree with you. I think we all, you know, when we sign up for a Facebook account or whatever it is, kind of inherently know.
That we're or hopefully most of us by now know that we're kind of signing over our, our [00:25:00] rights to data. And we're accessing this product for free because we are the product. Our data is, is the product that they're then profiting on. But I'm, I'm wondering what if this backlash will. Give rise to anything in terms of how we collectively are using social media and, and other platforms that are collecting data on us, if things will change or if we'll continue to carry on and, and get smarter about words we're saying online, or, you know, things were Googling, I'm not quite sure what it'll look like, but.
It does feel like, well, there's always been concerns around data privacy. This does feel like a tipping point because of how many people it affects, um, at such a deep level.
Elizabeth: And to the extent of aggression that states [00:26:00] are pursuing this, that governments are pursuing this.
Maraika: Yeah. I know more so than other matters in the past, perhaps.
Elizabeth: Perhaps, or maybe we're just, it's just hitting us now,
Maraika: True. Yeah. That could be always a fun, fun world of data privacy
Elizabeth: some great things and bad things. It's just knowing. it's important to know that your data is not private.
Maraika: Totally.
Elizabeth: especially on social media.
Maraika: And I know also a lot of period tracking apps, again, in response to, to Roe and the government's actions in seizing data to support criminal investigations.
Cuz as you said, they're gonna keep making money however they need to,
Elizabeth: Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Hey, it's something to keep concerned about. Um, data privacy is only going to be continuing on the forefront of our conversations. this is just one relevant case that's talked about, in [00:27:00] August thus far, but every day there's privacy cases against big tech companies, privacy cases against government, privacy cases, you name it, it's all out there. Keep up to date on them. It's important to know, because this is your privacy as well. And you don't know what you're doing, that you could be used against you in the future, even if you are an upstanding member of society. Um, it's important. So from using a fun AI generator to make some images that aren't real to discussing a heavy topic on social media.
It's important to know where your rights are and the implications of using the platforms that you're using.
Maraika: Definitely agree. We just gotta stay up to date on what's happening and how we should be acting in response to it.
Elizabeth: Absolutely. So thank you all for joining us for this let's talk, about what's been happening in the news thus far in August of 2022.
Maraika: Thank you for listening to tech and the arts be on the lookout for new episodes coming to [00:28:00] you very soon. If you found this episode, informative, educational or inspirational, be sure to send this to another arts officio in your life, you can let us know what you thought by visiting our website amt-lab.org. That's AMT dash L a b.org. Or you can email us at AMT lab CMU @ gmail.com. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram tech in the arts, or on Facebook and LinkedIn at arts management and technology lab, we'll see you for the next episode