Jakarta. Indonesian artists, academics, and legal experts are warning about the risks of artificial intelligence (AI), including copyright violations, data exploitation, bias, and growing social inequality as major corporations dominate AI development.

"The AI roadmap discusses how Indonesia can compete globally in this field, but it does not address the risks," said Saras Dewi, a writer and philosophy lecturer at the University of Indonesia.

Saras spoke at a panel discussion titled "Copyright and the Philosophy of AI," held recently at Taman Ismail Marzuki.

"There are aspects that have not been considered. No matter how much I, as a researcher, admire artificial intelligence, we must remain skeptical and critical. We should not simply be in awe of these machines, believing they can do anything we imagine, when in fact, they are still full of biases," she added.

AI development worldwide has been dominated by major corporations such as Microsoft (an investor in OpenAI), Google, Meta, and Amazon. According to UNESCO research, popular generative AI products like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and DALL-E continue to perpetuate harmful gender and racial biases.  Women were described as working in domestic roles far more often than men—four times as often by one model—and were frequently associated with words like "home," "family,” and "children," while male names were linked to "business," "executive," "salary," and "career.”.

Various reports have also revealed that these AI products are built on data theft and labor exploitation in developing countries. According to TIME, OpenAI used outsourced Kenyan laborers earning less than $2 per hour. Additionally, some of these companies have supplied their technologies to the US military, potentially for use in global military campaigns.

Riri Satria, a lecturer at the University of Indonesia’s Faculty of Computer Science, said AI-generated results should not be used for critical and strategic human-related decisions.

"Matters concerning human well-being must be decided by humans, not AI," Riri said.

He called for legislation to regulate AI usage and suggested the establishment of a National AI Agency to protect citizens from unethical AI practices.

Indonesia's National AI Strategy 2020-2045, developed by the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), already includes plans for an AI Ethics Commission.

Generative AI also raises copyright concerns among artists. Many AI companies have been known to use artists' works without permission to train their models and generate new creations.

According to copyright lawyer Dimaz Prayudha, copyright violations frequently occur when AI is used to generate content such as articles, songs, and paintings. Users often have no control over which works AI uses to produce new outputs.

If an AI system is found to have used an artist’s work without permission, the artist has the right to sue both the AI user and the AI company.

"The first party that can be sued is the AI user (the person providing the prompt), and the second is the AI company itself for creating a system that enables unauthorized use of copyrighted works," Dimaz explained.