An artist, a new university graduate, and a software engineer walk into a bar— what do they all have in common? Many things I’m sure, but one thing I could bet on and it is: fear and loathing of the growing mass adoption and overarching narrative of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Nowadays, the subject of AI feels as commonplace as discussing the weather with your neighbor. It also feels as charged a topic as politics. Admitting you use chatGPT can feel equivalent to confessing you actively support polluting Earth’s drinking water!

 In fact, the subject seems to span age, culture, and sector because of just how much the technology has infiltrated our daily lives. The truth is that whether we’ve opted in or not, AI is truly everywhere, yet many of the realities of how it works and what data it’s using to generate answers and art for us are hidden. Humans have long used technology to improve our quality of life; just as artists have long used technology to support their practice. So, why does this matter so much now? 

AI works by being trained on data, our human data, more often than not, without our consent. And with current dominant narratives surrounding AI technology, the mass adoption of the technology is framed as if our use of it is inevitable and something we must succumb to quickly or we might somehow blink and end up an unhirable caveman. However, the mass adoption of AI is not something inevitable like gravity, but is something that companies and the people behind them are actively investing in and we need to intentionally regulate. This matters for all sectors, but especially for the arts and culture sector, where the majority of working artists represent small businesses whose artistic works and copyright are their primary assets for making a living.

Because of the direct impact this technology has on individual artists, Research to Impact Lab (R2i Lab) monitors both how philanthropy supports AI technology (and artists’s use of it) and legislative attempts at regulation. For philanthropic funders, we have developed baseline questions for understanding the technology and how to best fund it through an ethical lens, as in our October 2024 paper, Learnings and Ethical Considerations: A Resource for Arts Funders on Artificial Intelligence. 

Recently, we had the opportunity to work with our longtime partners at Stanford University’s Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic (JIPIC) to advocate for individual artists by submitting a public comment on artificial intelligence and copyright to the California State  Senate’s Privacy, Technology and Consumer Protection Committee. California is a hub for both technology and artistic production, and therefore provides an opportunity to be a leader in modeling new legislation that other states could follow. It was crucial to us to submit a public comment that represents the concerns of our constituency of non-unionized individuals in the arts and at the same time showcases the key learnings from our AmbitioUS initiative and their work with cultural changemakers and community ownership experiments. With this lens, our public comments make known the current power imbalances between big tech and individual artist entrepreneurs. It also highlights the need for heightened transparency and the importance of empowering creators to more actively participate in data governance.

Being an artist in our current society already has many barriers to entry, such as having the time, space, and resources to create and sustain your practice. As we’ve seen through our many years supporting artist entrepreneurs in the (now-sunsetted) Business of Art program, our current economic system also expects artists to not only produce works of art, but also hold the responsibility of running an entire business from finance, marketing, and legal protections. So, when we talk about power imbalance, we are speaking to the unfair reality that in our current landscape of data governance and protections, individual artist entrepreneurs are meant to go head-to-head with the resources and relationships of the tech giants of Silicon Valley. Our public comments provide many ideas for how to rebalance power, but a major theme we chose to emphasize is the importance of developing legislation that supports artist-owned infrastructure. 

What’s Next? These public comments are part of a larger effort towards developing legislation  that oversees artificial intelligence in California. There may be more opportunities to continue to voice our opinions and respond to their findings and reflections from these hearings. If you would like to follow along with our efforts in ensuring the voices of our constituency are heard, subscribe to our newsletter to stay abreast to the most up-to-date opportunities to share your first-hand experiences. 

Want to go more in-depth in the public comments R2i Lab submitted to California Senate Privacy, Technology and Consumer Protection Committee? Follow the link below for the full public comment.