AI. Artificial intelligence. We’ve all heard plenty about this in the last couple of years, and the AI surge is far from over. TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) have been hit the hardest with AI content, possibly due to the quick posting and viewing format of each site.
Users can access AI generated images for free online and can manipulate images to show whatever they want. Thankfully, most AI trends contain harmless parodies of images featuring characters from The Simpsons and Hello Kitty.
Other trends show users making AI show the ‘final forms’ of things, ranging from country stereotypes to cats (often these threads end up with the subject in space for some reason).
From these trends, online personalities have blossomed. However, this raises some problems.
Does this mean people can now earn money from AI images? Who owns the earnings – the user imputing the image data and manipulating it into a story, running an account dedicated to their parody? Or is it the AI software that should benefit? And how far can users go without sparking copyright issues – which is especially relevant in the case of TikTok user MargieTheHun.
MargieTheHun
The TikTok account MargieTheHun is an AI generated, story-based account. It follows The Simpsons character Marge as a ‘hun’ as the account owner makes up her daily life stories through AI.
MargieTheHun has gained 91.3K followers since it started posting on December 3, 2023. It has posted slideshows about Marge on holiday, celebrating Christmas, and lately has dedicated some posts to helping viewers with mental health struggles.
This account is heading in a positive direction, using their platform to post positive content. One recent example is a slideshow of Marge enjoying the positive things about January and the New Year, helping those with depression in the winter months remind themselves of the good things in life.
As well as its positivity, the account continues to post light-hearted stories about Marge’s day-to-day life. Followers interact with this account as though this AI generated version of Marge is really running the account, even though they know it is AI, and asking her questions directly rather than aiming them to the account owner.
Copycats
Several ‘copycat’ accounts have surfaced in the wake of MargieTheHun’s success. I say copycat lightly, as this format of AI content has been used for a while now in various ways. However, TikTok users continue to comment on other Marge AI accounts that MargieTheHun is better.
Accounts with similar ideas include slideshows of Homer Simpson, Bart, Lisa, and Hello Kitty (who even collab-ed with a Marge AI account).
It is becoming an increasingly popular format of AI generated content on TikTok. More accounts following different characters pop up every day.
The issue
TikTok, like many social media apps, can be used to earn money. Accounts with enough followers and views per post can get money for their content.
The popularity of these accounts means that before long they will be eligible for the TikTok Creator Fund. However, do they own these earnings?
Of course, the account owners create the storylines, run the daily activities of the account, and add specifics when generating their images. But AI is the one creating the actual content that we see on these slideshow posts. So, does AI own it? Or does the creator deserve the money? It’s a really difficult question that I don’t have an answer for. There is also the separate issue of copyright as users continue to use characters from franchises in their content.
What I do know is that soon this will become a genuine problem as content creators earn money this way. Especially if, like YouTube, this becomes a career option in the future. Whenever money is involved, these accounts stop becoming a bit of fun and start getting a lot more serious as people and companies try to claim the earnings as their own.
Featured Image Credit: Pexels.com