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There’s no denying that the world around us is constantly changing and evolving. In fact, all you have to do is take one look around the small business world to see constant changes. Especially now that using artificial intelligence has become so common.
From using ChatGPT to help create content, to Canva’s AI graphic creation, artificial intelligence is speeding up the way we work in business each and every day.
And with those changes, the way we look at the legal side of business has to evolve as well. While federal laws and tax regulations seem to change at a snails pace, here at The Contract Shop®, we’re able to be nimble on our feet as the world evolves.
In fact, we just completed a bit of spring cleaning. By which we mean that we made updates to our contract templates — including adding a couple of artificial intelligence contract clauses in the necessary templates.
One of the first updates we made was adding an artificial intelligence contract clause that protects you, the provider. This clause ensures that you aren’t responsible for any damages arising out of or in connection with the client’s use of derivative works in relation to AI.
This probably sounds like a lot of nonsense, so let’s say you’re a senior photographer. And your client posts some of the images from their gallery. Then, if a third party takes an image, puts it into an AI generator and creates an image that’s embarrassing, and passes it around the internet the client cannot come for you for creating an image with the potential for being embarrassed. This clause ensures that you’re only responsible for the images you hand over - not what someone creates from those images.
The second artificial intelligence contract clause update we made was to our Prohibited Use clause. This clause already existed in the necessary contract templates, but we updated it to ensure that it covers Artificial Intelligence as well.
This means that along with telling clients they cannot add filters to your work, it also says they cannot use these images with an AI generator. Whether or not they actually listen and the contract has to be enforced is another story, but you’ll at least have it in your contract to back you up when you need to.
The third update we made during our spring cleaning this year is that we added a second brand new clause all about publicity. If you want to grow your business, a great way to do that is by showing off your work. Often within your contract, you give the intellectual property over to your clients.
This means, technically, you need permission to put your own work up on your website or social media to show it off within your portfolio. However, this new clause gives you the permission upfront to use your works within your own portfolio(including works that have client names on them), so you won’t have to go chasing clients down for permission in the future.
Our last big update this Spring has to do with Rounds of Reviews. If revisions are part of your process with your clients, you might have found yourself in a situation that inspired this update.
One where you send off your work, only for the client to come back with revision requests. Which you fix, and they come back with further requests. Without a clause indicating how many rounds of revisions are included, you can become stuck in a vicious cycle that prolongs your project, minimizes your profits, and leaves you and the client both feeling frustrated.
Now, you can be upfront with how many rounds of revisions are included, and what the cost of additional revisions would be, if necessary.
We hope that you find these four updates helpful and practical as you are working. If you already have a contract template from The Contract Shop®, you may want to go check and see if any of these updates apply to your template so that you can update your contracts, if necessary.
And if you haven’t snagged a contract from us yet — what are you waiting for?! Not only does a contract from The Contract Shop® ensure that you’ve got your 🍑protected, but it also gives you peace of mind in knowing that we keep our contracts up to date with what’s happening in the world. Plus, you can set up your contract in less than 10 minutes.(Seriously, we’re all about making sure you can be legally protected in the least amount of time possible.) Snag yourself a contract you can trust in.
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