AI avatars will ‘completely revolutionise’ the challenge of counterfeits
From celebrity ‘endorsements’ to rogue movie piracy apps, the technology is creating a new wave of fakery, hears Sarah Speight at the EUIPO conference in Alicante.
The legal community needs to be proactive in tackling the challenges of infringement in the “crazy” age of AI and virtual avatars.
This was the key message from Bharat Kapoor, vice president of anti-counterfeit platform Authentix, a speaker in one of the panel sessions on the first day of the EU Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) 5th Edition IP Case Law Conference 2024.
In IP Code-Breaking in the Era of AI Advancements, Kapoor gave an overview of the risks of avatars in cyberspace.
Referring to mythological avatars which, in Hinduism, were the physical incarnation of a deity on Earth, he dubbed today’s AI avatars as “computer gods”.
Today, the myriad apps and advancements in computing power will “completely revolutionise what we're going to be dealing with” in terms of AI.
According to a report by Goldman Sachs, he said, investment in AI and AI infrastructure will be $200 billion by 2025.
“Basically what that means is you're going to have this crazy computing power that will really change the way we interact with technology,” said Kapoor.
Avatars five or six years ago were “just these little libraries somewhere on the internet and you'd have to go and download them,” he said, infringement of which involved the use of copyrighted content owned by graphical artists.
He contrasted this by showing a few avatars of himself that he had created to illustrate how the technology has changed with open-source software—apps that are being created every day.
Infringement of today’s avatars, he explained, differs in that it relies on underlying data based on a form of copyright.
One surprising example of the successful commercialisation of avatars was a Korean K-Pop band called Eternity, which has 25 million followers on social media.
But Eternity is not made up of human beings—it is completely AI-generated, and part of a rising trend of virtual ‘girl’ bands.
There is a multiplicity of apps that enable such creative endeavours, but there is a dark side too with the misuse of AI, from using IP without permission, to fake endorsements, deepnudes, bias and piracy.
He showed examples of Batman ‘endorsing’ fake Nike shoes, Elon Musk allegedly promoting a fake cryptocurrency, and Taylor Swift apparently endorsing French cookware.
Referencing an even darker side to the creation of avatars, Kapoor cited deepfakes and ‘deepnudes’ used by apps such as Undress.
Criminality becoming a challenge
Another challenge is bias in AI, for example the creation of sexualised versions of a person in their avatar as questioned on social media by actress Megan Fox on social media after using Lensa AI.
Regarding rogue apps, Kapoor referred to Chatflix, a film piracy app through which the user can view movies for free, as “pure criminality”.
“These are the next few areas where you will see a lot of criminality, a lot of issues that are going to pop up in terms of deep fake news, politicians getting kind of reprocessed,” he said.
“As a legal community, we need to start addressing these risks as we go into the future-and more proactively.”
However, despite brands having anti-infringement policies in place, copyright infringement is ubiquitous, he indicated.
For example, the gaming platform Roblox has a policy to enable the reporting and removal of infringements. Despite that, the platform is “still rife with copyright infringement”, said Kapoor.
Other sessions from the day covered the Evolving Landscape of Trade Mark General Court Judgments, the Latest Design Case-Law and Developments; Challenges of Trade Mark Modernisation.
The IP Case Law Conference 2024 runs from April 29-30 in Alicante.
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