Hollywood studios have declared war on companies stealing their intellectual property using artificial intelligence, and are fighting back by using so-called “bounty hunters.”
AI is the villain in Gore Verbinski’s new time travel movie Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die, which hits screens worldwide this week, and predicts a grim future for our tech-reliant world.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence has become a real-world villain to movie studios trying to protect their intellectual property from copyright infringement.
A cursory online search suggests they are losing that battle, with AI iterations of major characters easy to find through a quick Google. But now Hollywood is hitting back.
LightBar wants internet users to hunt down copyright infringers
According to Deadline, a company called LightBar is “enlisting internet users to hunt down AI models generating content that could have been trained on copyrighted material.”
The company’s founder – who wishes to remain anonymous – was inspired to launch LightBar when ChatGPT users were creating artificial imitations of Studio Ghibli’s work, and the company is already running proof-of-concepts tests on Paramount and Warner Bros. content.
Here’s how the model works, as per Deadline’s description: “Any internet user can play the role of researcher, with people submitting examples of infringement and LightBar’s small team of moderators verifying entries.
“Successful submissions can earn a researcher up to $2 or more, depending on the complexity of the prompt and the information unearthed.”
As for how the company will make money, LightBar believes it could take a cut from lawsuits, settlements, or licensing agreements, and even become “middleman in partnership deals between studios and AI companies.”
LightBar launched last month, and is to seek outside investment soon.
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