CHARBONNEAU – Irony defined: BCSC uses AI to warn of AI

THE BC SECURITIES COMMISSION thought they were being clever by using AI which exploits musicians and writers to warn of AI which exploits potential investors.

The BCSC used an ad agency to produce a six-song album titled We Are All F** ked to warn about how criminals are using AI technology to advance schemes of romance, crypto and fake investment.

There is certainly reason to be concerned about how AI-generated deepfakes are used by cybercriminals to defraud people.

In 2024, British Columbians reported losses of $46.4 million from online investment scams, with the majority involving cryptocurrency. In the first seven weeks of 2024 alone, victims reported losses of $1.3 million.

These reported losses are the tip of the iceberg. Since people are reluctant to report that they have been scammed and duped, the losses reported are grossly underreported.

The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre estimates that the actual loss to scams by British Columbians is closer to $1 billion.

The creative director of the BCSC’s ad agency, Kyle Waye, used ChatGPT to create the lyrics.

The problem with using ChatGPT is that ChatGPT scrapes the internet of everything ever written, including copyright material.

Comedian and author Sarah Silverman, along with other authors, have sued the creators of ChatGPT for copyright infringement. They say their copyrighted books were used without authorization to train AI models.

The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT, alleging unauthorized use of its articles to train AI models. The newspaper says that ChatGPT uses content of original articles without permission.

After using ChatGPT to create lyrics, Kyle Waye fed the lyrics through the AI songwriting app Suno and prompted it with the style of music he wanted for each track.

I’ve played around with Suno and at first I was amazed how a few prompts on my part could generate such great music.

Then it occurred to me that the music was not generated out of thin air – Suno had scraped the internet of the voices and music of real musicians. And none of that talent was credited in the AI generated music.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has filed lawsuits against Suno and others for copyright infringements. They say that the companies unlawfully used copyrighted sound recordings to train their AI models, resulting in unauthorized reproduction of artists’ works.

Didn’t anyone at BCSC see the contradiction of using AI that potentially exploits one sector of society to warn of exploitation of another sector?

When asked about the apparent contradiction, Kyle Waye is glib:

“Part of what we like about the idea is using AI against itself to solve the problem, right? We’re kind of using AI to tell on itself a little bit (Globe and Mail, March 12, 2025).”

Is that like using a little bit of corruption to fight corruption?

If it’s wrong to cheat potential investors of their money, it’s wrong to exploit writers and musicians.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.