by Andrea DeGette, Alamance Community College, USA.
I recently wrote about my program, Media Literacy Through Filmmaking which posits: “The building blocks of media literacy are pulled from the box of media production then put together in order that sense can be made of how images and sound work together in our 21st century communication. A producer of digital media gains media literacy skills through the discipline of creation.”
My underlying premise assumes an author. So what happens if the author is AI? How does this affect my program? I am uncertain of just how the AI evolution threatens the underlying premise of my media literacy curriculum —which again, depends upon recognising the author of a movie or photograph.
Media literacy through filmmaking has been my passionate goal for decades. I built my program upon the understanding that creation of work brings comprehension of how media operates in our society. If you create a movie, you grasp how the movie is made! Writers, camera, actors, editing…all these tasks are completed by makers who create the work. Right?
Well, apparently not any longer. AI is able to create photos and videos as well as text. “Check the fingers! The AI image is so bad, it has 11 fingers…” We stare at the impossible images: revolting in some dark way, yet inviting and pleasing. Like sin itself, I suppose.
It was a strange day indeed when I realised that AI is creating video. A couple of years ago I found an early text to image program. When I tried it I was flabbergasted by the strange image that emerged…as well as the strange moaning sounds which emanated from the program along with the image. It was a guttural sound that accompanied the hazy image, reflected by the text of a dream I had put into the prompt. There were no recognisable features, yet it was haunting and arresting. Now that pictures, videos, music, all can be created by AI, how can I teach my students about authorship?
To rewind somewhat, this has been an issue at play for awhile. Ever since sampling became the practice in rap music, and clip-mining became established as a practice in video creation. Youtube to Mp4 programs have been in use by my students for years. If it made it up on YouTube without getting flagged, that was all you needed for permission. Artists wanted their work sampled. With the advent of the internet and streaming video, assigning credit seemed less important as attention spans diminished and video running times decreased (and clips got shorter as editing sped up!) This laid the groundwork for less accountability in terms of copyright, and paved the way for the current state of copyright guidelines.
So how to proceed in instructing students about creation and authorship? What is the way forward in the quest for media literacy in our increasingly complex media world? This new chapter unfolding threatens such definitions and creates a vast unknown challenge for media literacy practices and what it means to be original and authentic.
Author
Andrea DeGette is a filmmaker and educator (NAMLE Teacher of the Year 2022) working with K-12 since graduating from NYU in 1984. Her passion for media literacy has informed her teaching for over 30 years. DeGette is currently working on an Open Educational Resource: Media Literacy through Filmmaking: How We Story/Why We Story.
