New App Hopes to Empower Artists against AI

Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP
Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP
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New App Hopes to Empower Artists against AI

Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP
Artists have voiced increasing concern over the rapid growth of AI and its threats to creative livelihoods - AFP

In 2008, scriptwriter Ed Bennett-Coles said he experienced a career "death moment": he read an article about AI managing to write its first screenplay.

Nearly two decades later, he and friend Jamie Hartman, a songwriter, have developed a blockchain-based application they hope will empower writers, artists and others to own and protect their work.

"AI is coming in, swooping in and taking so many people's jobs," Hartman said. Their app, he said, responds "no... this is our work."

"This is human, and we decide what it's worth, because we own it."

The ever-growing threat of AI looms over intellectual property and livelihoods across creative industries.

Their app, ARK, aims to log ownership of ideas and work from initial brainchild to finished product: one could register a song demo, for example, simply by uploading the file, the creators explained to AFP.

Features including non-disclosure agreements, blockchain-based verification and biometric security measures mark the file as belonging to the artist who uploaded it.

Collaborators could then also register their own contributions throughout the creative process.

ARK "challenges the notion that the end product is the only thing worthy of value," said Bennett-Coles as his partner nodded in agreement.

The goal, Hartman said, is to maintain "a process of human ingenuity and creativity, ring-fencing it so that you can actually still earn a living off it."

- Checks and balances -

Due for a full launch in summer 2025, ARK has secured funding from the venture capital firm Claritas Capital and is also in strategic partnership with BMI, the performing rights organization.

And for Hartman and Bennett-Coles, its development has included a lot of existential soul-searching.

"I saw a quote yesterday which really sums it up: it's that growth for growth's sake is the philosophy of the cancer cell," said Bennett-Coles. "And that's AI."

"The sales justification is always quicker and faster, but like really we need to fall in love with process again."

He likened the difference between human-created art and AI content to a child accompanying his grandfather to the butcher, versus ordering a slab of meat from an online delivery service.

The familial time spent together -- the walk to and from the shop, the conversations in between running the errand -- are "as important as the actual purchase," he said.

In the same way, "the car trip that Jamie makes when he's heading to the studio might be as important to writing that song as what happens in the studio itself."

AI, they say, devalues that creative process, which they hope ARK can reassert.

It's "a check and a balance on behalf of the human being," Hartman said.

- 'Rise out of the ashes' -

The ARK creators said they decided the app must be blockchain-based -- with data stored on a digital ledger of sorts -- because it's decentralized.

"In order to give the creator autonomy and sovereignty over their IP and control over their destiny, it has to be decentralized," Bennett-Coles said.

App users will pay for ARK according to a tiered structure, they said, levels priced according to storage use needs.

They intend ARK to stand up in a court of law as a "recording on the blockchain" or a "smart contract," the scriptwriter explained, calling it "a consensus mechanism."

"Copyright is a pretty good principle -- as long as you can prove it, as long as you can stand behind it," Hartman added, but "the process of registering has been fairly archaic for a long time."

"Why not make progress in copyright, as far as how it's proven?" he added. "We believe we've hit upon something."

Both artists said their industries have been too slow to respond to the rapid proliferation of AI.

Much of the response, Bennett-Coles said, has to start with the artists having their own "death moments" similar to what he experienced years ago.

"From there, they can rise out of the ashes and decide what can be done," he said.

"How can we preserve and maintain what it is we love to do, and what's important to us?"



DeepSeek Faces Expulsion from App Stores in Germany

FILE - The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
FILE - The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
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DeepSeek Faces Expulsion from App Stores in Germany

FILE - The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)
FILE - The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File)

Germany has taken steps towards blocking Chinese AI startup DeepSeek from the Apple and Google app stores due to concerns about data protection, according to a data protection authority commissioner in a statement on Friday.

DeepSeek has been reported to the two US tech giants as illegal content, said commissioner Meike Kamp, and the companies must now review the concerns and decide whether to block the app in Germany, Reuters reported.

"DeepSeek has not been able to provide my agency with convincing evidence that German users' data is protected in China to a level equivalent to that in the European Union," she said.

"Chinese authorities have far-reaching access rights to personal data within the sphere of influence of Chinese companies," she added.

The move comes after Reuters exclusively reported this week that DeepSeek is aiding China's military and intelligence operations.

DeepSeek, which shook the technology world in January with claims that it had developed an AI model that rivaled those from US firms such as ChatGPT creator OpenAI at much lower cost, says it stores numerous personal data, such as requests to the AI or uploaded files, on computers in China.