Common Forms of AI

March 1, 2024

Screencap from Grammarly's text generator depicting a passage with a prompt to rewrite with a food pun — Grammarly's text generator.

Text generators

Tools that generate text based on user prompts.

Examples: copy.ai, Anyword, Peppertype, Grammarly

Uses: Automate drafting of routine documents like overdue notices or new cardholder welcome messages, draft marketing copy or web page text

Controversies:

» Sports Illustrated was recently criticized for publishing AI-generated product reviews on its website, which it blamed on a company it licensed content from.

» AI-generated travel guides reached top spots in Amazon’s search results, boosted by reviews alleged to be fake.

» AI can hallucinate, or present plausible but false information as if it were true.

Chatbots

Similar to text generators, chatbots respond to user prompts, but they have a greater focus on responding in a conversational format.

Examples: ChatGPT, Bard, HuggingChat

Screencap of ChatGPT — ChatGPT’s screen.

Uses: Respond to basic informational and reference queries, alert users to library resources, generate keywords for research, summarize works, create bibliographies and citations, recommend books

Controversies:

» The Authors Guild filed suit against OpenAI in September 2023, alleging that the company improperly trained ChatGPT using books by the authors it represents.

» Similarly, comedian Sarah Silverman and authors Richard Kadrey and Christopher Golden sued Meta and OpenAI in July 2023, claiming their books were used without permission to train chatbots.

» Many news publishers have blocked webcrawlers from AI companies to prevent them from using current news stories for training.

Image generators

Tools that create pictures in response to user prompts.

Examples: Canva Magic Studio, Craiyon, DALL·E

Uses: Marketing, document design. Improve accessibility by ensuring adequate contrast and legible fonts and generating descriptive text or descriptive audio

Controversies:

Théâtre D’opéra Spatial by Jason M. Allen, an AI-generated art piece — Théâtre D’opéra Spatial
by Jason M. Allen, which won the 2022 Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition in the emerging artist division’s digitally manipulated photography category.

» An AI-generated art piece won first place at the 2022 Colorado State Fair Fine Arts Competition in the emerging artist division’s digital arts/digitally manipulated photography category. Artist Jason M. Allen disclosed his use of the AI image generator Midjourney when he entered.

» A UK court ruled in December that a Getty Images lawsuit against Stability AI can proceed. Getty alleges Stability improperly used millions of Getty’s images and their accompanying metadata to train image generators. Getty has filed a similar suit against Stability in the US.

» A January 2023 class-action suit against Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt alleges unlawful use of copyrighted images to train AI generators. The artists expressed concern that AI art will replace their own work.

Video generators

Tools that can create videos from text or image prompts. Different generators require varying levels of input and offer different levels of customizability.

Examples: Lucas AI Video Creator, Pictory, BHuman

A frame from a video ad for a flower shop created by Lucas AI Video Creator

Uses: Marketing videos, video guides

Controversies:

» Google has decided not to release its video generator, Imagen, to the public over concerns it can produce content that is violent or sexually explicit, and that it can rely on stereotypes or cultural biases. Similarly, Meta is still testing its Make-A-Video service to “reduce the creation of harmful, biased, or misleading content.”

» Deepfake videos that replace one person’s likeness with another are easy to create and use for misinformation, harassment, or fraud.

Tagged Under

The World of AI

How libraries are integrating and navigating this powerful technology

A photo of Moxie, an artificial intelligence robot used at Santa Ana Public Library.

Realizing Potential

Libraries employ (and investigate) artificial intelligence

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