Patreon CEO Jack Conte weighed in on the debate over artificial intelligence and the use of creative works to train AI models at the SXSW conference in Austin this week. He asserted that he is not anti-AI, but he believes that AI companies should be able to scoop up creators’ content to train their models without some sort of compensation.
“I learned a very important thing as an artist, which is that change does not mean death. You can get back up, and you can fucking go again,” said Conte, who created Patreon to address the issue he faced as a musician — getting people to pay creators for their work.
“The AI companies are claiming fair use, but this argument is bogus,” Conte said. “It’s bogus because while they claim it’s fair to use the work of creators as training data, they do multimillion-dollar deals with rights holders and publishers like Disney and Condé Nast and Vox and Warner Music.”
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If the AI companies’ argument around fair use was legal and sound, then they wouldn’t be paying these large rightsholders, he added, going on to ask “If it’s legal to just use it, why pay?”
“Why pay them and not creators — not the millions of illustrators and musicians and writers — whose work has been consumed by these models to build hundreds of billions of dollars of value for these companies?”
Conte clarified that he was not anti-AI or anti-change. “I accept the inevitability of change, and I feel agency in discovering my next path through the chaos. A part of that challenge even excites me,” he said.
“Still, the AI companies should pay creators for our work, not because the tech is bad — but because a lot of it is good, or it will be soon — and it’s going to be the future. And when we plan for humanity’s future, we should plan for society’s artists, too, not just for their sake, but for the sake of all of us. Societies that value and incentivize creativity are better for it,” he added.
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Conte ended his talk on a hopeful note, saying humans will make and enjoy the work of other humans for a long time, despite whatever progress AI makes on this front.
“Great artists don’t play back what already exists,” Conte said, referencing large language models’ (LLMs) ability to predict the appropriate output. “They stand on the shoulders of giants. They push culture forward.”
Comte’s words come during a time of widespread debate over AI, copyright, and what constitutes “free use.” Several individuals and companies have accused AI companies of copyright infringement, and there have been several lawsuits over the issue.