The phrase “garbage in, garbage out” is often used in the IT industry to describe how bad input data simply results in bad output data. It doesn’t matter how advanced the AI ​​or semiconductor technologies are: if you put garbage in, garbage will inevitably come out. Conversely, AI becomes more powerful with good content.

Leading global AIs such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT already seem to have mastered all the information on the planet. They absorb all materials that can be digitized, including books, encyclopedias, news articles, and conversations and posts on social networks. There are even predictions that AI learning materials will be exhausted by 2032.

The problem is that AI indiscriminately ingests high-quality content without paying for it. It has also used methods such as “crawling” or “web scraping”, which indiscriminately search the Internet for information. These behaviors undermine the motivation of developers and even cause them to give up creating. Some developers build poison (toxic pixels) into their digital creations, traps that render the AI’s learning useless when it learns from them. This is another digital battle in the 21st century.

The collapse of the creators will be followed by the demise of AI. The void left by the creators will be replaced by garbage, and that is all the AI ​​can learn from.

The Korean government began researching improving AI-related copyright systems a year ago and released a “Generative AI Copyright Guide” late last year. However, these measures could be perceived as belated and insufficient. Protecting creators is not about regulating AI, but about preserving its potential. Creating a robust ecosystem where created content and AI can complement each other is a prerequisite for becoming an AI stronghold. Advancing this mission is crucial to prevent Korean AI from learning low-quality content.