Facial recognition technology continues to advance. – Image ©Tim Sandle
Social media continues to highlight less serious applications of CHATGPT 4-O features. It’s not that serious. In other words, it looks at first glance. For example, searches for “How to Treat Barbie Boxes” have skyrocketed by 2,600% over the past week, with the platform being flooded with people packaged in Barbie Boxes. At the same time, ChatGpt saw a surge in 1 million new users in just an hour since launching the new image generation feature.
But how safe is this practice that lets AI manipulate your image? Do you really know how safe it is to upload faces to these AI tools? And when it comes to copyright and personal data, can you unconsciously step into the legal gray realm?
Christoph C. Cemper, founder of AI prompt management company AIPRM, helped Digital Journal break down the hidden risks behind trends and uncover what you need to know before jumping to the bandwagon.
Your face becomes data and that data can be travelled
Basically, when you upload a photo to an AI art generator, you will distribute biometric data (face). Some AI tools store that data and use it to train future models, or even sell it to third parties.
Does ChatGpt store your data?
Yes, that’s right. Openai’s Privacy Policy clearly outlines two types of data: information you provide (personal details such as your name, email, and uploaded photos and images) and information that is automatically collected (device data, usage data, and log data).
The reality means uploading “innocent” means converting portraits of family, friends, or couples into Ghibli-style art and providing personal information to models that can be used to fine-tune the results for fun. It may be retained and used without express consent, unless you actively opt out of CHATGPT’s training data collection or request data deletion via settings.
Your image may contribute to the Deepfark trend
When face data is uploaded, it becomes vulnerable to misuse. Images shared on AI platforms can be used to create deepfakes, identity theft, or spoofing fake content. You can unconsciously pass on your own digital version of yourself that you can manipulate in a way you didn’t expect.
In one disturbing example, users have trained me since 2013 on the LAION-5B Image Set, a dataset used in AI tools such as Stable Diffusion and Google Imagen.
The increased risk here is genuine and surprising. This could give scammers another tool to leverage deepfakes generated by AI. Since the launch of ChatGpt’s new 4.0 image generator, people have started using it to create fake restaurant receipts. As one X user says, “There are too many real validation flows that rely on “real images.” Those days are over. ”
This could lead to landing on a copyright minefield
Creating AI-generated art in the style of iconic brands like Barbie, Studio Ghibli, Disney, Pixar, Simpsons, and more may seem like harmless fun, but it can violate copyright laws by mistake. These distinct artistic styles are protected intellectual property, and replicating them too closely can be considered the creation of derivative works. What appears to be a compliment can become a lawsuit waiting to happen easily. In fact, some creators have already taken legal action.
In late 2022, three artists filed class action lawsuits against several AI companies, claiming their image generators were trained using the original work without permission. As technology continues to evolve faster than the law, efforts need to balance fostering innovation with protecting artists’ creative rights.
You may have signed more rights than you noticed
Many AI platforms bury a wide range of license terms using fine printing or ambiguous language, and grant cleaning permissions to reproduce, modify, or even commercially distribute submitted content. This means that your image, or an image in a generated version of AI, could end up as part of marketing, datasets, or future AI model training.
Please note the key red flag terms such as “transferable rights,” “non-exclusive,” “royalty-free,” “impossible rights to support,” and “irreparable licenses.” These phrases will potentially fit even after you delete the app, but you can use your images without limit.
