According to three agency executives who spoke to Digiday, agents are renewing AI clauses and conditions and more creator agreements.
By raising legal and practical considerations for marketers and creators through the ongoing use of generator artificial intelligence in content creation and influencer marketing, executives say they have listened to more clients over the past year and coordinated creator agreements to mitigate brand safety risks, copyright infringement and other legal issues. This includes languages that specify that authors do not use AI in content generation, and requests that the agency itself not use AI in its work.
This is because broader AI and copyright policies continue to take shape in the US, with high-tech giants and lawmakers debating the balance between promoting AI innovation and supporting copyright restrictions. Openai, for example, is already facing lawsuits in multiple outlets owned by the investigation reporting center The New York Times and Alden Global Capital. Google was also sued by education company Chegg. Chegg argues that the AI-generated summary in search results from the search giants affects traffic and revenue.
“Smart brands may have already added these clauses, but they may have added these clauses rather than knowing that transparency builds trust.”
Adoption of AI appears to be growing among creators who use it for a variety of tasks, from generating ideas and creative assets to using bots and virtual influencers. In a survey of talent agencies and individual creators, PMG discovered in February that almost 50% of creators were using AI in some way. Mostly I use ChatGpt for writing, creative ideas, editing and organising.
As a result, agents are looking for more transparency, and many clients have begun to request contractual clauses that explicitly state that AI has not been used to create content over the past year, said Bill Rowley, legal counsel at creator marketing firm Open Influant. According to Rowley, the request has increased by more than 30% in new advertiser agreements.
“We include AI references in many of our creator agreements based on client preferences,” Laurie said.
Whether or not a creator honors this Agreement is ultimately a matter of trust, but this method allows you to obtain a guarantee that you can use content and images from the creator, rather than the AI platform that belongs to the creator and is used to create the content.
“Creators who can clearly communicate AI workflows build trust more than vague people,” Choi added. “When AI is embedded in every step of content creation, from brainstorming to publishing, to trying to draw a line between AI content and human content, it becomes messy.”
Sometimes, some clients require a “broader ban” in which government agencies do not use AI at all in their work. Agents are hoping to see more nuanced AI terminology as these tools are integrated into different parts of the company’s workflow, Rowley added.
At trade schools, contracts focus primarily on whether the final output video or image utilized AI.
Another marketing agency shared in the background that a client raising brand safety concerns added an influencer’s contact clause regarding the use of AI without “previous written consent.” This request began to emerge from the second half of 2023. This continues when the AI tool ChatGPT entered the scene around January 2023. The agency said the rest of the talent contract for “camera principal” (camera featured actor) will add this language on a case-by-case basis depending on the client and the specific situation.
Creator contracts and AI terms are part of an evolving conversation as brands and institutions seek to actively preempt licensing and copyright issues, says Yelena Ambartsumian, founding lawyer at Ambart Law, focusing on issues related to intellectual property and copyright. These can backfire and damage your brand’s reputation if there is a problem with your content.
“The output of the generated AI is not copyright because of the lack of human authors,” says Ambartsumian.
Furthermore, AI content causes copyright infringement when the AI model is trained with copyrighted material. The marketing company she consulted was developing and editing character mascots using AI tools. Since “creative expressions” were made by machines, Ambartsumian advised the company that the product was “not copyrighted” and said that it would actually return the license to the AI company, based on the terms of the AI vendor license.
“This means that advertisers who publish AI-generated images that could infringe someone’s copyright may not rely on the AI system that is causing the infringement, and may also be responsible for direct copyright infringement to the copyright owner,” Ambartsumian explained.
As far as AI use goes, it appears that brands are dealing with it on a case-by-case basis so far. Uladzimir Seuruk, CEO of Health Supplement Brand Cata-Kor, believes that more companies and creators are looking to speed up AI’s creation and production of content, but disclosure of usage is the brand’s practicality and preference.
“There doesn’t seem to be a clear solution for influencers and businesses,” says Seuruk. “It comes down to their decisions regarding personal brand guidelines and reliability.”
The agency also hopes to see more clearer cuts and become standard practice in the near future, AI disclosures become a standard practice. From art generation on stable diffusion to writing tools like captions and caption AI, it becomes more subtle and subtle as you may use a variety of tools throughout the creative and marketing process.
Choi’s addition: “The best deal isn’t just asking, ‘Is this being generated by AI?’ – Rather, “Where and how was AI used throughout the entire process?” It’s about transparency across the creative workflow. ”
