W11Course shell3 hours

Generative AI

The crisis of authenticity

When generation becomes cheap, what makes authorship, evidence, and trust expensive?

The seminar joins training-data governance, copyright, attribution, synthetic media, provenance, companionship, labour, and the environmental and epistemic costs of scale.

Join the live room

Before class

Bring one synthetic artifact and document what can and cannot be known about its provenance, consent, authorship, and truth.

After class

Write a product policy for disclosure, provenance, misuse response, and remedy.

The promise

By the end of this room…

01Separate copyrightability, infringement, licensing, attribution, and ethical consent.
02Evaluate provenance systems without treating them as truth machines.
03Analyze deepfakes through speech, fraud, evidence, and power.
04Identify distinctive risks of companion and persuasive generative systems.

Why this week now

Signals, not scene-setting.

Copyright disputes now distinguish model outputs, training copies, lawful access, and remedies rather than one broad question about 'AI art.'

Authenticity infrastructure can show provenance while leaving intent, truth, context, and missing metadata unresolved.

Companion systems turn sustained relational interaction into a product surface with safety and dependency duties.

Run of show

Provoke → frame → work → argue → synthesize.

Open student room ↗

0:00
provocation
Commit before the concepts
If a generated image has perfect provenance metadata, is it authentic?
Live activity · week 11 opening
0:15
frame
Training, transformation, and authorship
Copyright disputes now distinguish model outputs, training copies, lawful access, and remedies rather than one broad question about 'AI art.'
0:45
discussion
Reading tension
Student leaders present the assigned readings as a clash of defensible positions, then moderate questions that expose the hidden assumptions.
1:10
frame
Provenance is not truth
Authenticity infrastructure can show provenance while leaving intent, truth, context, and missing metadata unresolved.
1:35
break
Break
Ten minutes. Leave the room's unresolved question visible.
1:45
forensics
Spot-the-deepfake evidence lab
Role-based groups work the anchor case through technical, legal, stakeholder, and normative lenses.
Deliverable · A two-minute finding with evidence, uncertainty, and an actionable remedy.Live activity · week 11 forensics
2:25
controversy
Generative-AI copyright moot
Assigned positions, side-switch, and a joint recommendation that names the value or stakeholder it leaves exposed.
Live activity · week 11 controversy
2:50
synthesis
Re-vote and leave a trace
Repeat the opening vote, inspect what moved, and submit the strongest argument you still reject.
Live activity · week 11 exit