Thoughts On The AI Scrapers Of Our Vocal Creations
Observations On Justin's Post
Introduction
When Vocal was hit with the DOS (Denial Of Service) attack, resulting in loss of access to our work, they got the site back up and running and issued this statement. It really is worth taking the time to read and understand it.
So What Do I Think
The AI Scraping and stealing is worrying. It is used to fuel advertising back at us, add learning for AI writing tools and straight off plagiarism and theft, none of which Vocal consones and they have put tools in place to combat this.
Everything we publish, on any platform, can be a target for these thieves. Vocal gives us some security with the tools they have put in place. The situation reminds me of when my daughter, Juliet, published her first web page and then said:
"But Dad, somebody might see it",
I thought that was quite funny. We publish online because we want to be seen.
I have a blog, and as far as I know, there is nothing in place to stop people stealing from it, in fact I steal from it to share stories on Vocal, but it is all my own work, and no Vocal Creator has any reason to visit my blog (although this is how many visits it has had).
Vocal does have access to all our work, and they do use it to make the site work. The search facility is now very good, and I think it is getting better. I wrote about it here:
The fact that they have this should make it simple to spot plagiarism of Vocal Stories which at the moment is reaching epidemic proportions and has to be policed by Vocal Creators. Here are a few pieces that have been written on this:
These are stories that came up when I put "plagiarism of Vocal stories" into the Vocal Search, and I hope that one day we won't have to write stories like that.
AI is blamed but it's not AI it is the people doing this. As I say about AI, it is artificial but it's not intelligent. If a person throws a brick through your window, it's not the brick's fault, it is the person throwing the brick.
Conclusion
I think that Vocal are doing a good job for us, the platform still has many faults, and I will continue to berate them for not fixing certain things, but these are minor issues.
They are dealing with the major issues and the platform has little downtime, which is why it becomes so disturbing when it does go down.
Thank you so much for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts.
I included Queen's "We Will Rock You" because it seems sort of appropriate in a few ways
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Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred
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Comments (8)
Queen's "We Will Rock You" & "We Are the Champions" came out the year I graduated high school & began college. I didn't have either stereo or radio, but my roommate did & he was a huge Kansas & Queen fan. I still remember it playing at Godfather's Pizza when my family came to visit & took us out to eat. I've loved those songs ever since. Good article, btw.
This really is getting out of control. They won't do what needs to be done to stop it either
I echo your thoughts, Mike. It's not the brick(AI) but the people who throw it/misuse it, and those who do should have to cope with the consequences of that.
"If a person throws a brick through your window, it's not the brick's fault, it is the person throwing the brick."- Exactly! Plagiarism absolutely disgusts me. I would love nothing more than to see all of the offenders yanked off the platform.
Ugh, so frustrating and worrying indeed, not that I understand all ins and outs of it, but it sounds like there’s a lot of unethical AI application across the board in the society , and you’re right - it’s not the AI’s fault, it’s how some people are using it. Hopefully more efficient regulation will be established eventually 🤞🏼. Thanks for the article.
Well-wrought! It's a conundrum, for sure, and for all of society. The battle against plagiarism and the use of art for marketing and propaganda far precedes AI, just as the cause of peace has long been antedated by the aggression of the territorial instinct, leading to war. We are, by and large, and so to speak, monkeys with machine guns. Those of us with pure hearts must trust that there are forces of good in this world, who develop moral conscience through non-intrusive methods, and we must each aim to be just such forces ourselves, as you seem to be doing here. There are many ways and it takes all kinds, eh?
Omggg, tell me about it. As if these AI frauds making our work drown isn't enough, there's plagiarism as well 😫😫😫😫😫
Yes, the technology is not the problem. The problem is the humans who misuse such technology. The more thieves gain access to AI the more we will suffer.