I'm a massive fan of Jo Penn and her Creative Penn podcast. Thanks to her, I knew to get involved with AI tools rather than leaving them all to tech types.
And now I feel like a puny artist in the face of the Borg ...
In August, I wrote to Open AI to see if they'd grant educators access to DALL-E without a paywall. No answer.
In September, I tried to get educator licenses from Midjourney, but they don't offer any system.
After a couple of weeks, I wrote a letter to Scott Galloway and Kara Swisher because they show how aware of the issue they are:
Dear Kara Swisher and Fabulous Scott,
I'm an artist and art educator, and I have a bone to pick with OpenAI. I'd love your thoughts on this.
While ChatGPT remains accessible without charge, likely benefiting from user interactions for improvement, tools like Dall-E and MidJourney are gated behind a paywall, even for trial use. This presents a challenge for artists and students, particularly in public education.
How would you recommend advocating for access to these tools, especially when bulk or institutional pricing is unavailable?
To put it in context, as a blog writer and an artist who has been putting my work up on the internet for nearly three decades, I feel like they have used my work to learn from, and I would like us to have a crack at learning their stuff in return.
What is your position on access to LLMs and Image creation software?
Thank you. Please keep up the silliness and the insights,
Julia (in Providence, RI)
As far as I know, they have yet to get to my letter (no surprise, with their busy lives -- I'm not slamming them, of course!)
My wonderful boss at Rhode Island College, the head of the RI STEAM Center, Dr. Lisa Bain, agreed to use some STEAM Center funds to set up a Rhode Island College Midjourney account. I'll be using this to educate, for free, artists and educators.
So I had high hopes today when I went to the inauguration of the Institute for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies at RIC.
I wanted to ask about protecting artists, who are themselves small business owners, in Rhode Island. I also wanted to challenge the panel to advocate for student and educator access.
It was good they didn't allow questions because my Scarlet A in my STEAM mantel wouldn't have been the suitable mode for the celebratory STEM feeling.
"Rah rah, six-figure salaries!" they all said -- and I would have been like, "Wait, but tech graduates will be making that money by chewing up, without permission or remuneration, the output of artists in this tiny state!"
They wouldn't have liked that. Some day, I will learn social graces.
The keynote speaker, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) Director Jen Easterly, spoke of opportunities, as did Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos.
Senators Reed and Whitehouse were there, as were Governor Don McGee, and Mayor Brett Smiley. Everyone lauded Congressman Langevin's efforts.
I'd been hoping to ask a question after all the celebratory speeches. I wanted to ask about AI access, as well as protection of intellectual property, for artists and educators in Rhode Island.
Seeing that RIC has the only affordable art school in Rhode Island with the super-stocked Alex and Ani Hall, shouldn't they be more interested in protecting and defending artistic intellectual property, as well as increasing access for artists and educators?
In my experience subbing at Hope High School, I was dismayed by how little access the students seemed to have to these tools. At the beginning of the school year, my students in 10-12 grades had yet to learn what ChatGPT was, let alone how to use image manipulation tools.
Administrators and other adults seem overly concerned about the academic pitfalls of AI. More concern should be shown about AI access and equity.