KEVIN TRACY: Good afternoon. I'll take your questions at the end of this As you may have noticed, some very unique art has begun appearing on KTracy.com. This art has been created by two artificial intelligences developed in the recently established KTracy.com Artificial Intelligence Art Lab. When the transcript of this press conference is made available online later today, you will find an example of AI generated art below the header and page title.

We at KTracy.com realize that this is a controversial decision, and as an artist myself, I share in the concerns of the thousands of people around the world who risk having their livelihoods ripped away from them as AI art is further refined. This is why I want to discuss when KTracy.com and I personally will and will not be using artificial intelligence to create art. First, however, I want to share with you why I made the decision last year to secretly begin pursuing Artificial Intelligence for website art.

One of my New Years resolutions going into last year was to put images in more of my posts. At the very least, I wanted something that could be used as a "featured" image at the top of every page. Traditionally, despite Francesca's insistance that it was a bad idea, I would just take pictures from the internet, crop them, make some minor edit, and use that. That obviously puts KTracy.com in some legal jeopardy. That's becoming more and more of a concern with processing power on image bots becoming better and better. While that wasn't stopping me, it was on the back of my mind that I needed an alternative. Then, in February of last year, China began flying spy balloons over the United States and the Biden Administration refused to shoot the balloons down, giving amazing intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party. On both articles I wrote specifically about that topic, I wanted to add a photo of a Chinese spy balloon. Unfortunately, all of the images I found were horrible, boring, or would only work in a vertical layout; which doesn't function well in the horizontal layout I want for my featured images. I spent HOURS looking for a good image both times; which was a wasted effort because I never used any of them. At the same time, the KTracy.com Staff began experimenting with developing artificial intelligence for seeking opportunities to make our code more efficient and increase load times. Ultimately, there weren't any suggested improvements we wanted to make with the code, but at a weekly staff meeting; we began discussing the other uses for AI and the topic of spending hours looking for the right image and editing it came up. It took a while, but we finally have two AI models that are able to create images for us.

With this power at our fingertips, I felt it was important to establish strict use cases and rules for what can and cannot be created.

Our "use cases" define where we allow AI art. They are as follows:

• AI images may be used in place of images not owned by myself or KTracy.com;
• AI images may be used in the theme only to create decorative patterns, and;
• AI images (other than theme patterns) may be used on pages not related to the art created by other people;

In addition to these strict use cases, we also have strict rules for what these images may contain in these strict use cases. They are as follows:

• AI images may not contain the recreated face of a real person, unless all the below conditions are met:
  the subject is an elected office holder, and;
  the image must clearly be artistic in nature and not a photograph;
• No elements of AI images may be used in the creation of any art being sold;
• AI images may not contain nudity;
• AI images may not be used when the Kevin Tracy Museum of Art and Photography private archive has an adequate image;

These rules are just the start. I'm sure as time goes on, we'll adjust these to make them more strict. With that, I'll open the floor to questions. Go ahead, Mark.

Q: Thank you, Mr. Tracy. Are you worried about putting artists out of business?

KEVIN TRACY: No. I want to stress that I am only using AI to perform artistic tasks that I normally would have done myself. If I need an artist to create something for me that I cannot create myself, I'll still hire an artist for that.

Q: Kevin, will you be open to using AI to create images of yourself?

KEVIN TRACY: As of right now, no. After some time, I may revisit that decision as I can see uses for it on the home page header image that could be fun. That's one of the only examples where I may loosen the rules on AI images on KTracy.com. Next.

Q: Have you considered the copyright rules for AI images created by the KTracy.com Artificial Intelligence Lab?

KEVIN TRACY: As of right now, all AI images will have the same copyright as everything else on KTracy.com. I actually don't like this. I would like to make all of our AI images open to public use. However, I've been advised against that until we figure out the best way to do that while protecting our existing copyright on literally everything else on KTracy.com.

Q: Except those images you lifted from other websites in your news archives?

KEVIN TRACY: Yes, except those. And look, legal will kill me for saying this, but in our 20 year history, we have never sued anyone for copyright infringement. I've had my art work lifted by FoxNews and the Drudge Report without credit in the past and never sued anyone. I do indeed get VERY annoyed when they don't credit me or KTracy.com; but for those that want to use something we created, just link back to KTracy.com, please. That's all I ask.

Q: What will you do with the extra time spent not looking for the right image for your articles?

KEVIN TRACY: I'm going to start working on the Handwritten Bibles Project on the Kevin Tracy Twitch Channel.

Q: Are you considering any other uses for Artificial Intelligence? Perhaps writing articles for you?

KEVIN TRACY: No, AI will not be creating content for KTracy.com. At most, we might use it to track active and inactive voice usage; but I'm not ready for that yet. However, we are considering using AI in some process automation roles. I know right now the staff is busy working on refining our AI image creation process and restoring the 2004 archives; so I don't know when that's going to be a thing.

Q: When will the 2004 archives be restored?

KEVIN TRACY: Rachel is leading that effort. At our last meeting, she said they were working in chronological order and were trying to censor some really stupid things I wrote in April and May. With that said, I asked them to try and have it ready early March 2024; which will be the 20th anniversary of when I first purchased the KTracy.com domain name. If you want to know more than that, you'll have to ask her when she's not busy.

Q: When will that be? Rachael DeLonge hasn't been available for a press conference in a long time.

KEVIN TRACY: It's going to be an even longer time. She still has to restore the rest of the 2004 and the entire 2005 archive. All right guys and gals, I have to file to get on the ballot before the office of voter registration closes.

[[KTracy.com press corps explodes into a frenzy while Kevin Tracy walks away]]