Freesound Forums

Though this is from a US perspective, the Berne convention and US influence might make it relevant to others outside the US. It's just a lawyer discussing some issues around recent guidance from the federal government about AI authorship, registration, etc.
https://youtu.be/wy08U3gEU8w?si=hqcyDtRwPnbuzlsi

Since one of the pressing problems with gen-ai contributions to this archive is lowgrade spam -- would it be possible to put a hard limit on how many minutes-worth of contributions a user can make per week?

If someone has to think about what's worth using up their allowance to post, there'll be some built in quality control. At the least, it will be something the user *likes*, however it was made.

Hi,
I think a time or quantity limit would have to be so high that it would be useless.
None Ai uploaded, can share 50-100 sounds in a go. (Though perhaps 150 uploads in a week wouldn't hinder most users) but it might someone who did a multi-sample of an instrument.
As for time, I think some field recordist frequently upload more time wise than ai users share.
A user sharing an over hour worth of audio per day is not unusual.

I don't have specific numbers for Ai users, I'd say its in the 50 uploads per 3 days with 3min audio. So about 6h of audio per week. Currently for worst case scenario ai user.
I agree, more than your average user, but very close or less than some power-users here.
(Then those users could be whitelisted). I guess your idea could work.
Then those intensive ai users are still rare right now, often it's just a few users uploading 4-5 songs on a one-time basis. There probably less than a dozen frequent ai users here.
I presume people realise there isn't much reward in Ai content, be it street cred points or monetary or self fulfillment. Making them a short time users.

All that said, not only do I think a time/quantity limit wouldn't work without hindering some normal users, but the main AI material is music, which is rejected at the moderation process.
I see little Text To Speech, or "Ai field recording" I think, most of what goes through moderation, is a few "dinosaur screem" that some regulars here do, but I don't think that's an issue.
I might not be seeing at the right place, I'm not omnipresent on the site; feel free to share links or your side of things ^^

On another side, though the lens of Freesound as a research sound bank rather than a creative sound library, filtering for quality/usability isn't as desirable as just MORE DATA.
So I think really, all the problems and the best for the research and creative world, is to flag ai content and let users filter it in/out at their will, and rely on the rating system for quality.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and continuing to the discussion, looking forward to continuing it.

Im, not here to argue or debate about "AI" -- nearly 40 years in technology, I understand all of it 100% and I am 100% against it. There is nothing new you could share with me to convince me its actually a good idea.

Ive been using this site for years but only recently made a profile, donated to the org, and I came here to specifically speak against this. "AI" makes "content", it does not make music, and I will not support any org that intentionally engages with "AI" companies or individuals.

"AI" is wrong on many levels -- if you are not aware of the dangers of AI, take a look at EFF, do some opposition research (do you know what critics of AI are even saying?), and try to understand -- there is no good way for all this to end, under this economic system anyway.

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the very interesting discussion. This message is to very briefly mention that we are working on ways through which AI content can be marked as such during the sound description process (and thus filtered), and also we're working on ways through which sound uploaders can better express their preferences in relation to their sounds being used to train generative AI models (in addition to what CC licenses say). We're doing this to address both the concerns already expressed in our blog post from last June, and also concerns expressed in this forum thread.

We will let you know more about it once we have implementation details sorted out. Thanks everyone again for sharing your thoughts!

Hey freesound community, how are ya.

I've been on this site over 18 years. Oldest account in this discussion (yeah I checked).

I'm the user you other users upload for. I've been sampling yall beautiful people for almost 2 decades. Lol!

Late at night in the dark, a man sits mangling (possibly torturing) some poor innocent sound he found on this site... many many untold hours... years... there is a deep sense of respect in this process. Any maker respects the material they work with. Even a humble potter 5000 years ago respects the clay which they mold into something as simple as a cup. Does AI respect anything at all?

In other words, take solace in the fact that I'm a genuine human being. And for the record, money is never why real ones are into creative expression. Surely most of you are aware when I say, it can even us cost money (and certainly time) to pursue artistic endeavors.

Personally, I don't see any meaning in art that is not sourced from genuine expression by a real person. If I'm being brutally honest, I'd assert that it's probably the strongest form of poserdom that has ever existed. Nature can be beautiful, but nature isn't art. It has aesthetic similarities, but they aren't the same. Nature isn't expressing anything consciously. We are, though. Is AI conscious? Currently, my opinion is LOLNO. Besides, AI isn't nature. Nor is it human. It is something new, different. Likely interesting in the future.

Pick and choose your battles. Is this sword worth falling on?

Think about any convenient medium throughout history - printing press, photography, film, etc - it's not like the greatest masterpiece peak works were created the instant the technology became feasible. Peaking implies a temporal nature - these things take time. Everything is built upon one another. Culture is a layercake - none of us are here without having consumed content to cultivate our senses and sensibilities.

Being the goofball that I am, if given the choice between AI tunes or nothing at all? Today, I'd take nothing at all. But it'd be foolish or naive to think we can somehow collectively stop that cultural atomization from happening, or that it won't become more sophisticated or worthy of merit over time. And if that never appears possible in my lifetime? That's fine as well, still a lot to hopefully savor in my backlog or rehash to wax nostalgic.

If I was invested in this site from the exact opposite side - as in, had uploaded 2k samples over 18 years - and some techno-dweebs ripped all my content to throw into some monstrous poser algorithm, I'd probably be salty too.

Or... if I was invested in developing some generative content engine, I'd probably be running around like stealing everybody's content as well, no matter how seemingly irrelevant. I mean those guys are treating the internet like it's the wild west or something right now, it's bananas.

Maybe the silver lining we end up with, especially on the internet, is OG sites like Freesound become more relevant to the communal/human side of what art and connection and culture are all about. Maybe this place will become a haven, if the people who run the site navigate the future in a wise manner.

This is situation reminds me a lot of the American folklore tale about John Henry (man vs machine). Machine will win out, but respect to the people who have made this site such a great source for many different reasons, and hopefully it continues to be that way.

In closing, let me say this as simple as possible... without you, then this site just has mere sounds. Meaningless. Equivalent to AI. YOU are what makes these sounds special! It's all about the authentic human experience and AI cannot replicate that. Never forget that.

Keep it real, Freesounders. Keep it 100% human and I'll keep yoinking your goodies. Keep freeing the sound! I'll post again in another 18 years, smell ya later.

Apologies if someone else already mentioned this -- I skimmed the thread but didnt see anything: will there be a way to filter out "AI" nonsense in the future? I see the "AI" tag showing up and some people are using it, so at least for now a filter would work until people begin just refusing to tag their generated garbage.

The *energy consumption of what people call "AI" alone* will accelerate climate change emissions - already at the tipping point - by a large amount, and it has already begun. Regular energy consumers are already seeing 300%+ increases in energy bills, not because energy is harder to make but because subsidies are being given to "AI" (datacenters) companies and for-profit energy companies are making the energy. These companies RAISE RATES ON REGULAR CONSUMERS rather than build-out more infrastructure or reduce the subsidies.

Right now, the 'Taco Bell' fast food chain (Yum brands) is partnering with Nvidia to replace 10,000s of workers with "AI" (machine learning + automation, not AI). This is just one company. Many others have already begun, meanwhile customer service expectations are dropping so fast it will make your head spin. Does anyone notice the CUSTOMER SERVICE ISSUES that are rapidly growing across all industries?

How about the idea that these companies will try to replace MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS with LLMs and automation? Is anyone comfortable with *this* (western, american) healthcare system removing MORE real people and replacing them with toys???

This is an insane, obvious, hindsight-informed dead-end that anyone over the age of, I dunno, 18 can see as clearly as day. Remember the auto industry? Oh heyyy but the new auto industry that replaced the old one builds gargantuan trucks that avoid EPA regulations because they are SUVs not trucks. Do you want your nurse to be automation? Do you want your music to come from corporate brands that corner all art markets and replace all humans, de-valuing art until there is nothing left?

There are TWELVE YEAR OLDS in my children's online school classrooms being caught by the teacher on a weekly basis using nonsense LLMs to cheat on all subjects, and they are proud of it. The children doing it have parents that are allowing them to do this so they look like math, science, etc geniuses in front of other kids, and it is making teachers, scientists, etc, work hard just to figure out what papers are real!

My goodness, there are more risks than benefits to this as it all stands now! Under a different economic system - one that does not endlessly incentivize trash like this - perhaps LLM/AI would be benign or a useful tool, but as it stands now this is NOT some magic pandora's box that is now open, that we cannot close, that we must tolerate. No. No it isnt.

frederic.font wrote:
Hi everyone,

Thanks for the very interesting discussion. This message is to very briefly mention that we are working on ways through which AI content can be marked as such during the sound description process (and thus filtered), and also we're working on ways through which sound uploaders can better express their preferences in relation to their sounds being used to train generative AI models (in addition to what CC licenses say). We're doing this to address both the concerns already expressed in our blog post from last June, and also concerns expressed in this forum thread.

We will let you know more about it once we have implementation details sorted out. Thanks everyone again for sharing your thoughts!

Good to know this is still on the radar. I think maybe a blocking function might need to be introduced as well to filter out accounts that only post AI-generated content, I've already come across a couple just from browsing the homepage.