Can a 4-hour YouTube video make people care about online plagiarism?
Plagiarism doesnât need AI to thrive online Copying has always been a part of internet culture. Sometimes itâs ethical, sometimes not. Itâs almost always incentivized: Once social media began reshaping online life, copying became a go-to tactic for getting views. When copying crosses an ethical line, we generally call it plagiarism. And plagiarism is thriving online as well. Get good enough at it â and donât get caught â and you can make money by simply lifting the hard work of someone else and packaging it as your own. With so much content online, plagiarism can sometimes simply outrun efforts to detect it. The rise of AI-generated content is only piling on to this existing problem. Itâs easy to see how we got here. Memes work by copying and tweaking an existing idea, sound, or image. Viral âchallengesâ ask people to film themselves literally doing the same thing as someone else, from pouring ice water on their head to performing specific choreography to a song that just blew up on TikTok. If social media success thrives on creating things that other people will want to share, then what better way to ensure clicks than [by doing the same thing that worked for someone else](? The line between imitation and plagiarism should be clear. Bad actors try to benefit when itâs not. In the maximalist decor DIY space earlier this year, [one influencer publicly accused another]( of copying her project videos, when it appeared that the two creators may have just happened upon some of the same design trends at the same time. And over the weekend, I watched a nearly [four-hour YouTube video]( hosted by [Harry Brewis,]( who posts as Hbomberguy, that laid out how optimized copying becomes plagiarism, a video that spent a great deal of time analyzing one video essayist in particular: James Somerton, a queer YouTube essayist. The plagiarism allegations against Somerton are pretty grim in this video, and include instances in which Somerton appeared to copy text from academics working in queer culture and history, a book and documentary on the history of LGBTQ people in film, other queer YouTubers, and essays published across the web, including, [it seems,]( at least [two articles]( from Vox. But one thing struck me about how Brewis approaches this topic: Itâs not taken as a given in this video that his audience will care about stolen content. About 40 minutes into the video, Brewis addresses this directly, telling his viewers that, in part, you should care about plagiarism on YouTube because âinternet video isnât a silly playground where teens pretend to be scared of scary horror games anymore. Itâs a business.â Plagiarism of and among creators is stolen labor. This all brings to mind probably the biggest intellectual property story of the year: How copyright law applies to AI-generated content. [A federal court ruled against]( someone who tried to copyright a piece of art created by generative AI earlier this year, writing that so far âno court has recognized copyright in a work originating with a nonhuman.â Generative AI companies have been [hit with a number of class action lawsuits](arguing that they have unethically lifted from [published works]( in their training data. But the issue is not settled, and as [Axios notes](, the volume of work generated by AI is vastly outpacing attempts to decide who gets to profit from it. And while there are plenty of people worried about all sorts of things AI might do, it seems even trickier to get a plagiarism accusation against a machine to stick. Brewisâs video convinces users to care about Somertonâs apparent plagiarism by looking at who gets harmed: in this case, the less-famous queer writers and YouTubers whose work was seemingly lifted for Somertonâs videos. These writers, Brewis notes, are often not compensated or credited adequately for their ideas in the first place. Having a creator who also is part of the LGBTQ community steal from his peers in order to earn money for himself is a community harm. Thereâs no equivalent for AI. AI isnât part of a community or an occupation that has ethical standards to apply. It might be wrong for a generative AI tool to train on and essentially copy creative works without compensation or permission, but the creators of tools like ChatGPT are generally not participants in the communities they are lifting from in order to train their systems. Perhaps thatâs why a lot of the bigger conversations about AI and plagiarism right now seem to [focus on students]( using AI-generated writing to plagiarize their papers. But AI, like YouTube creation, is a business, run by people who are making money off of its use, including by cheating students and by well-meaning users whose DALL-E prompts might accidentally generate a copy of a work by [Greg Rutkowski](. Although the legal and ethical issues surrounding these two spaces sound very different, theyâre both essentially about stolen labor. Somerton has seen some short-term consequences from Brewisâs video. Heâs lost [50,000 subscribers in the past month](, according to SocialBlade, mostly in the past few days. His Patreon and X accounts are now inaccessible. His [YouTube channel remains live](. Meanwhile, Brewisâs video has nearly 6 million views as of the afternoon of December 6. Does that mean Brewis successfully made people care about plagiarism on the internet? Perhaps for a little while, at least. The idea that someone would have to make the case to care about online plagiarism implies that, historically, scandals like these have been survivable for creators. Jonathan Bailey, a writer who tracks online plagiarism for [Plagiarism Today,](said he was âconfidentâ that Somerton, along with another creator discussed in the video, would at least attempt to reignite their careers after attention moves on. âA.W. Ohlheiser, senior reporter [A black-and-white photo of IBMâs quantum computer, which resembles several stacks of processors arranged in a slight semicircle, all with a shiny metal exterior.]( IBM Research [Qubit by qubit, the quantum computers of tomorrow are coming into being]( [The quantum computing industry has a road map to the future â but can it reach its destination?]( [A photo of an iPhone showing the iOS 17 logo.]( Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images [Local police should not be your go-to source for iPhone safety news]( [A warning about the NameDrop feature on iOS 17 is just the latest in a long history of misleading Facebook posts from law enforcement.]( [Illustrated portrait of Meredith Whittaker]( Lauren Tamaki for Vox [Meredith Whittaker wants to keep your digital conversations private]( [Whittaker, the president of Signal, is also asking hard questions about artificial intelligence.](
Â
[Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Illustrated portrait of Yoshua Bengio]( Lauren Tamaki for Vox [Yoshua Bengio helped invent deep learning. Now heâs trying to make it safe.]( [How a renowned AI scientist became a voice for caution.]( [Illustrated portraits of Paul Christiano and Beth Barnes]( Lauren Tamaki for Vox [Paul Christiano and Beth Barnes are trying to make advanced AI honest, and safe]( [Christiano and Barnes have helped mainstream concerns about AI misalignment.]( Support our work Vox Technology is free for all, thanks in part to financial support from our readers. Will you join them by making a gift today? [Give]( [Listen To This] [Listen to This]( [Still hot and bothered]( Earlier this year, the FDA approved a game-changing drug to treat hot flashes, a symptom of menopause. But menopause is much more than just hot flashes, as health writer Jancee Dunn explains. We talked to her in May about why a transition that happens to half the worldâs population still feels like a mystery. [Listen to Apple Podcasts]( [This is cool] [CreedTok](
Â
[Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [YouTube]( This email was sent to {EMAIL}. Manage yourâ¯[email preferences]( , orâ¯[unsubscribe](param=tech) â¯to stop receiving emails from Vox Media. View our [Privacy Notice]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved.