Is AI OK? A Librarian’s Thoughts on the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence

Feelings about artificial intelligence (AI) are running high just now.  As a writer, an artist, and a librarian I have friends and colleagues in all three areas with different opinions.  Some think it will make work easier, some see it as a tool or a toy, and some think that it could spell the downfall of all we hold dear.  

I can see all three points of view.  But, as people in the media suggest AI could begin to replace artists, writers, and, yes, librarians, I feel that the whole world would suffer from that shift.  So I’m going to try to offer some suggestions for how AI can be used carefully and ethically.   

I’ll look at the issue from two different perspectives - AI for content creation and AI for research.  

Content Creation 

Every person brings their own perspective to an ethical quandary.  There is no definitive answer if it is right or wrong to use AI content in a finished product. We can, however, use the information we have to decide if it is “fair use” under current copyright law.   

Before I go on, let me emphasize, I’m not a lawyer.  This is not legal advice.  This is my explanation of the situation based on what I know from studying Library Science.  

What is fair use? For the most part, if you want to use someone’s work, you have to pay them or at least get their permission, but there are rules that allow you to use work without paying or permission in some circumstances. If the way you use someone else’s work falls within these rules, it is considered "fair use."  

After all, most writers or artists draw inspiration from other artists and writers, and fair use allows you to create using that inspiration, as long as you don’t borrow too much.  It allows for science fiction that uses the latest scientific research.  It allows for people to write reviews or do commentary about various media, and it lets a teacher copy that one poem to read to the class as long as they are not copying the entire book.  

There are four things to consider when deciding if something is fair use:

1. How you are using whatever it is you are making. -  Is it for personal use? Are you selling it on Etsy? Are you using it for a fundraiser? If you are making money from someone else's work without paying them, it probably is not fair use. 
2. What kind of work you are drawing from. - Generally using nonfiction works is easier to argue fair use.  Using someone's original art or work of fiction is harder.   
3. How much of that work you are using. - Is it one stanza of one poem out of a volume of poems or a few quotes, or is it entire chapters or plotlines?  Does your song hit the same notes for a few bars, or is the entire melody the same?  
4. How your use of the work impacts the market for the copyrighted work  - If you take the premise of your favorite novel and write a screenplay, that is going to hurt the original author's chances of selling the story to a movie company.  If you are a teacher copying entire workbooks for your class, that is going to negatively impact the market for that workbook.  Uses that decrease the market for the original creator tend to not be considered fair use.    

So is using AI for content creation fair use? It is a thorny issue.

Advocates of AI point out where it sits on the third metric - given the volume of data AI models pull from, and the percentage of any one individual work an AI image copies is usually very small.  The trouble is, sometimes the percentage can be much higher.  For example, if you prompt a generator to make an image in the style of a specific artist or work, it will draw much more heavily on the work of that individual for the product it creates. Art that the artist has not been paid for AI to use.     

This is one thing if you are using the generated image for your D&D character sheet.  You would not have paid anyone to draw your character (probably).  You are not making any money on the image and you are not impacting the ability of the artists whose work was aggregated to make your halfling barbarian to make a living.  But if you are a major gaming company, using AI art that pulls from current artists to illustrate your newest rule book, you are making money and hurting the livelihood of the artist you should be paying to draw that art instead.   

Research 

Using ChatGPT (the most widely known AI "virtual assistant") to help you research your term paper or an AI-powered Google search to find your next summer read probably falls closer to the D&D character than it does the major gaming company in most cases, but there is another problem with AI when it comes to using it for library tasks  - the quality of sources.

As librarians, we look for the best and most reputable sources of information to draw from when someone comes to us for research help.  ChatGPT is not doing the same. It pulls from a number of online sources, including fictional works and works with inaccurate information.  Also, since ChatGPT pulls information from all over the internet, the popularity of an answer can have a much greater impact than its accuracy and usefulness.  Sometimes, when AI can’t find the right answer, it will just make one up - like making up fake addresses for websites.  

As a test, I asked ChatGPT for some recommendations for recent graphic novels.  The list it gave me was Dog Man, Guts, InvestiGators, and The Baby-Sitters Club series.  This is an accurate result. These are all graphic novels, but they are among the most popular ones out there.  If you are a ten-year-old looking for a new book to read, this list probably isn’t very helpful.  A librarian, on the other hand, could give you a list of recently published titles, new series, and recommendations tailored to your interests. 

Now What?  

So how can we use AI responsibly? Here are my rules for myself.

• Check the information you get from AI research with another source.  Sometimes AI information generators cannot tell you where they got information, but sometimes they can answer a question of “where can I confirm this?"   
• Only use AI for personal projects, not for profit.  
• Follow the rules of fair use when you generate an image or a piece of writing on AI.  Use it as a jumping-off point, but add your own creativity and work to the finished product.  

Making images on AI image generators can be a lot of fun (for the terrible ones, you get as much as the good ones), and Chat GPT allows you to look for information and advice without troubling your friends or family and have amusing conversations about niche interests.  Just be careful to make sure that the information you are getting is correct and that you are respecting the work of content creators who make the things you love while you do it.