NEW APP HOPES TO EMPOWER ARTISTS AGAINST AI

In 2008, scriptwriter Ed Bennett-Coles said he experienced a career “death moment”: he read an article about AI managing to write its first screenplay. Nearly two decades later, he and friend Jamie Hartman, a songwriter, have developed a blockchain-based application they hope will empower writers, artists and others to own and protect their work.

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“AI is coming in, swooping in and taking so many people’s jobs,” Hartman said. Their app, he said, responds “no... this is our work.”

“This is human, and we decide what it’s worth, because we own it.”

The ever-growing threat of AI looms over intellectual property and livelihoods across creative industries.

Their app, ARK, aims to log ownership of ideas and work from initial brainchild to finished product: one could register a song demo, for example, simply by uploading the file, the creators explained.

Features including non-disclosure agreements, blockchain-based verification and biometric security measures mark the file as belonging to the artist who uploaded it.

Collaborators could then also register their own contributions throughout the creative process.

ARK “challenges the notion that the end product is the only thing worthy of value,” said Bennett-Coles as his partner nodded in agreement.

The goal, Hartman said, is to maintain “a process of human ingenuity and creativity, ring-fencing it so that you can actually still earn a living off it.”