With the rise of artificial intelligence, utilizing technology for productivity has gotten significantly easier in the past few years. Anyone can generate an image, email, or essay for free by typing a quick prompt into a text box. 

You can also use AI to alter someone’s voice to make them say something they did not say, or make someone look like they did something they did not do by generating a video with a picture of their face.

While an AI email helper and grammar checker is a great time saver, essays should not be AI generated. This diminishes the independent thinking skills necessary for students to learn in order to be successful in the working world, which could be practiced in language arts classes through essay writing. In addition, AI writing sounds generic and lacks the individual voice of a student.

Luckily, school systems are highly opposed to using AI and there are significant consequences that students face once they are caught. More and more teachers are relying on AI detection programs to grade assignments and essays, and the most common consequence is to give the student a zero on the assignment. 

If a college student is caught using AI to generate an essay, report, or an entire dissertation, the consequences are even more dire. Recently, in the University of North Georgia Dahlonega Campus, a junior in college turned in an assignment that was flagged as being artificially written. Although she claimed that she only used Grammarly to check her writing, she was put on academic probation and lost a scholarship. If schools are disciplining the use of AI, social media and the arts should as well.

“Art” created using AI should not be sold. After all, these programs use a combination of existing artworks to mimic the techniques and create a prompted image. Taking a few seconds to write out a prompt is miniscule in comparison to the hours required to create a piece of artwork with a paper and pencil, or other mediums. 

Artwork created using AI should have a watermark over them which cannot be removed. This would significantly limit the likelihood of it being used, and it would preserve the beauty and creativity of human created images and graphics. 

Artificial intelligence can not only be used to generate images, videos, and text, but by saying a few sentences into a mic, or uploading someone else’s voice speaking, you can make the person say whatever you want. Worse, with a photo you take of someone’s face, by uploading it to an AI program, you can make a photo or short video of them doing whatever you want. Depending on how it is used, this may cause significant privacy concerns. 

Defamation with the use of AI generated photos has been seen with pop artist Taylor Swift. Explicit images of her were created by generating her face onto inappropriate images and spread throughout the internet. What makes this worse is that this could occur to anyone who has posted a photo of themselves on the internet. 

Creating videos and photos with real people using AI should require an ID photo instead of a profile photo so that you cannot take photos off of the internet and alter them without their permission.

Several instances of privacy concerns and copyright have already occurred. Recently, scammers using the AI voice tool have taken the voice of people’s children from their social media accounts and have manipulated the voice to sound distressed and cry for help. The scammer then proceeds to ask for money in return for their “kidnapped” child. Distressed parents may think their child is in danger, and then send the amount of money, when in reality, the child may be elsewhere and out of danger. 

This is why AI programs should require voice identification in order to generate audio. This would work by requiring an individual to say a given phrase that pops up on the screen before proceeding, and the phrase will change each time. Then the use of someone else’s voice will be significantly reduced.

The immoral use of Artificial Intelligence needs to be more acknowledged and stopped, especially with how fast the program adapts and how artwork, images, and audio are beginning to look and sound more realistic. 

It should not be so easy to manipulate someone else’s voice or photo without their permission, no matter how famous they are. This violates one of the most important aspects of anybody’s life – their privacy. 

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