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Good morning! We've covered how @improvbot_ai works, and how the feed is curated. But what about permission to do this? Are you allowed to take 2 million words from 28,000 @edfringe shows, over 8 years, and just play with them? Well, yes and no. And what about ethics & copyright?
We acknowledge that this work builds upon the programming information of years of previous shows, and its success will be based on whether it can mimic these effectively. And we have to get access to the data, and permission. And we have to think legally, & ethically, its ok.
The data: the last 8 years of Fringe programs are availalbe in digital form, over at the @edfests API, https://api.edinburghfestivalcity.com/ . Interested in developing with Festivals data? ask permission! ImprovBot is a @CreateInf project (more on that later!) - we are partners with @edfringe.
We at @EdinburghUni & @CreateInf pitched our idea to @edfringe and they have been a great support of ImprovBot. We also got ethical clearance, following our internal processes, as the chance that this will have a negative effect on a named individual or institution is very low.
What about copyright? These listings hold a huge amount of IP. The important thing is this is - for now - a non-profit, research project. Which means we are covered by the UK Copyright exceptions for text and data mining, and for parody and pastiche https://www.jisc.ac.uk/guides/text-and-data-mining-copyright-exception
We've been careful to screen for negative mentions of real people & institutions. Any likenesses to shows or individuals created by our AI is purely coincidental, although there's some very culturally famous folks that appear! So we have a takedown policy: https://improvbot.ai/about/acknowledgments-and-disclaimers/
A lot of what we are doing is taking this idea for a walk. We hope that our transparency is useful, & encourages our audience to think about where data goes & comes from, how you can get to use it, and what it means to bridge this gap between the digital & creative industries
