An AI filmmaker is freaking out because people "stole" his prompts.
There is an old biblical saying, "You reap what you sow," which essentially means you get out of the world what you put in. So excuse me while I pile onto an AI filmmaker, who posted on Twitter that their prompts were being stolen by the outside world.
The poster in question has been going viral for a very funny complaint... which you can now read below.
As you can see above, this disgruntled person starts with a "Never do this: Passing off someone else’s work as your own." And then completely glosses over that AI is the amalgamation of everyone's work taken without permission. Then they complain that a simple day-to-night transition was created by them, so no one else should be allowed to use it.
Welcome to the real world, my dude. While you were using AI as a shortcut, you neglected to learn that because it's all stolen slop, anyone else can steal it, too. That's because you can't copyright AI. There's nothing proprietary about you or your prompt.
That's the caveat of using AI!
Hopefully, this is a learning moment for the AI user in question, but it also raises a lot of questions surrounding AI. Say you devote your life to using this "tool," can you ever make any money selling these prompts or videos if you cannot copyright them?
Can they just be aped with absolutely no consequences?
Sorry, but because the argument for AI training on copyrighted materials is that it's "learning" from them, the same goes backward to the things you decide to punch in and spit out. That's anyone's fair game.
And also, these big companies like Grok or ChaptGPT or even Midjourney probably don't need to keep your prompt private -- or they can probably use your prompt to take it and learn from it and spit out a better one they make public.
I'm sure they're allowed to see what works and share that with others as well.
People are finding out in real time that having your craft and hard work stolen with no payment really sucks! Think about all the filmmakers you try to mimic in those programs. The ones you say to write like, direct like, or shoot like -- that's their hard work you're taking without actually doing any work to learn the craft.
Excuse me if I don't feel bad for anyone using AI and finding out the hard way that it may screw them in the end.
It's not fun to learn your lessons in public, but social media has opened that up and been savage about it. But AI is a tool that laws and companies are skeptical of because it's brand new and because it has no protections.
Staking your future on learning to use AI, but not learning the specific programs or tasks it's ripping off is gambling. It means you can't use the tools if needed, and I think that will limit both your imagination and job prospects in the future.
