‘AI not understanding the art form it replicates, a key concern for regulators’

At the Mint India Investment Summit 2024, Chaitanya Chinchlikar, vice president and chief technology officer of Whistling Woods, highlighted the legal ambiguities surrounding AI-generated content. He pointed out that AI does not recognize the origins of the images it utilizes to generate new works, leading to complications in copyright claims. 

Chinchlikar said that such legal uncertainties have given rise to numerous lawsuits.

During a panel discussion titled “Changing Narratives: Can AI Boost Topline?“, experts dissected the evolving role of AI and generative AI within various sectors, addressing the hurdles that need to be overcome before organizations can fully integrate this technology into their offerings and services.

Chinchlikar explained how someone creating a fictional character using AI cannot be sued for intellectual property (IP) infringement because of the ownership ambiguity of the said creation. “This is one reason why you are not going to be able to use generative AI (GenAI) to create monetizable, merchandisable IP. On the other hand, if it is just a standard, casual footage that you want in the background, you will end up using Gen AI a lot even if it is in a commercial,” he said.

He also remarked on the longstanding presence of AI within the media and entertainment industry, drawing parallels to traditional technologies like green screens. According to Chinchlikar, the application of computer vision, machine learning, and other AI technologies is not a novel concept in the sector.

He further flagged the inflated hype surrounding GenAI, which he feels is at its absolute peak. He added that it would come down eventually because GenAI was a “solution looking for a problem.”

Harshjit Sethi, managing director of venture capital firm Peak XV, emphasized the necessity of integrating AI thoughtfully into existing products. He observed a widespread eagerness among companies to leverage AI as a key driver of the next technological revolution, with many seeking to incorporate it into their products in various capacities.

“So, the question that I tend to ask companies is, are you building something that is uniquely possible today, that would not be possible without the advent of this technology? Or are you just infusing AI as a thin layer on top of something that already exists,” Sethi said.

He added that if companies use AI to solve a problem differently rather than adding a layer of AI to solve their problems the same way, it would be of greater interest.

While some industry experts surely doubt the hype surrounding Gen AI, many were employing it internally within their companies.

Sudarshan Seshadri, senior vice-president and global head of AI for Coforge, said with the advent of Chat GPT, “everybody wanted to put AI in some shape or form.” For instance, companies working across web-friendly domains like banking, financial services, insurance, travel, transport, retail, and healthcare, were now looking to integrate AI into their operations.

“If you condense it to a very simple form, it’s a two-by-two matrix. On the one side, you have either cost optimization, or internal integration, and on the other axis we have data now or we have data in the future,” said Seshadri, adding that sorting data for cost optimisation is the easiest thing to do.

However, the process of testing Gen AI internally is not an alien concept.

Mint had reported on 4 February that mid-cap Indian IT firms were deploying Gen AI solutions internally for their company operations before rolling out these models for their clients.

Seshadri said that all industries were doing well when it came to levaraging Gen AI. “In fact, even in transport, in which we would think it’s very rudimentary like lorries moving across. Now, AI is being used very heavily along with IoT sensors to determine what trucks or lorries might break down, and what is the optimum route for them to take to improve their productivity,” he explained.

As the use of AI across industries catches on, the need to use it responsibely is also coming to a head.

Aakrit Vaish, chief executive officer of Mumbai-based conversational AI platform Haptik, talking about the use of explainable and responsible AI, said that regulation and consumer behaviour could be figured out along the way as long as there was enough application of technology.

“The larger challenge I think that all of us are talking about is this–what are those sets of applications where you can really build deep solutions and products, and which can have an exponential result,” said Vaish.

Overall, the panelists were in agreement that AI, particularly GenAI, was here to say, but its wider uses and applications needed to be fleshed out for the technology to be put to good use.

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Published: 30 Mar 2024, 11:33 AM IST

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz