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You may not think much about copyright laws, but in today’s age of videos, art, and writing, we are all copyright holders. If you have ever written a blog post, a book, or taken a photo, you are the copyright owner and an author. It’s in the news often thanks Generative artificial intelligenceand issues surrounding development Chat bots, image and Video generators.
Sadly, copyright and AI are a mess. The race to develop the most advanced AI models shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. In order to create these next-generation models, technology companies are looking for a lot of high-quality human-generated content. They need this work to improve their AI models, whether it’s giving a chatbot a more realistic personality or an image generator more artistic styles to reference. On the other hand, AI enthusiasts may wonder whether it is possible to obtain copyright protection for creative works that support AI.
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Most AI companies have been very vague about the content they use, resulting in more than 30 lawsuits making their way through US courts. You may have heard of some of the most prominent ones, such as New York Times v. OpenAIwith the publisher alleging that ChatGPT used reporters’ stories verbatim without proper attribution or permission.
(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of CNET, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI in April, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis’s copyright in training and operating its AI systems..)
I spend a lot of time thinking about copyright and AI in my work reporting on AI creative services. I’ve interviewed intellectual property lawyers, spoken with many of the creators involved, and spent a lot of time analyzing legal rules issued by government agencies. I’ve used that experience to create this guide on what you need to know about copyright in the age of AI, which we’ll continue to update as things change.
What is copyright?
Copyright is a set of stated rights that protect “original works of authorship established in any tangible medium of expression, now known or later developed, in which they may be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise transmitted,” according to the Copyright Act of 1976.
In other words, copyright is a legal protection that gives original authors rights and control over their original works. Copyright protection can apply to books, art, music, films, computer programs, blogs, architectural designs, plays, choreography, and more. We are all copyright holders. like US Copyright Office “Once you create and fix an original work, such as taking a photo, writing a poem or blogging, or recording a new song, you are the author and owner,” he says.
There are two ways copyright intersects with AI. On the output side, people using AI services such as chatbots and image generators want to know whether their AI-powered works qualify for copyright protection. On the development side, there are a lot of concerns about AI companies illegally using copyrighted materials. Here’s what we know so far.
Can I copyright an image or text I created using AI?
As with many legal questions, the answer is: it depends.
Our guidance on this question comes primarily from the U.S. Copyright Office, the federal agency responsible for administering copyrights. The office has issued a series of reports on artificial intelligence and copyright with its latest guidance. In the office’s second report She maintained her stance Images and videos generated entirely by artificial intelligence are not eligible for copyright protection.
However, there are a number of creative editing tools now available using AI. These tools aren’t used for bulk creation, but rather use AI to do things like add or remove objects, age actors, or enhance audio and video. You can still register and obtain copyright protection for AI-edited content, but you must disclose your use of AI. in Public records portalyou can see in the notes how people used AI to create their copyrighted works.
In rare cases, you can obtain copyright protection for work generated entirely by AI, but you must prove that your input or creative processing of those AI-generated elements rises to the level of protection. Here’s how One company managed to do this.
Can copyrighted content be used to train AI?
The basic premise of copyright law is that the rights holder – usually the original creator, and sometimes in other cases it can be the employer of a person’s work – can decide how their works are used. In many cases, owners choose to license their content; This allows people to use copyrighted works, for a fee, with appropriate attribution. So, if a copyright owner wants to give an AI company permission to use their content to train AI models, there is nothing wrong or illegal about that. Several publishers, including the Financial Times and Axel Springer brands, have struck multi-million dollar deals with AI companies to do this.
Problems arise when AI companies use copyrighted content without first obtaining permission from the copyright holders. This is what creators allege has happened in several lawsuits, including a class action lawsuit filed by the concept artist Carla Ortiz Against stability Amnesty International. There are currently more than 30 active lawsuits between AI companies and creators over copyright concerns.
Decades of copyright law precedent states that such use, without permission, is not permitted. Some creators claim that technology companies have violated their copyrights. Infringement occurs when the copyrighted work is “reproduced, distributed, publicly performed, publicly displayed, or made into a derivative work” without permission from the copyright holder, such as the Copyright Office. He specifies He – she.
It will be up to the courts to decide whether the use of copyrighted material in AI development amounts to infringement. In the meantime, many tech companies are trying to find a workaround: the fair use exception.
What is fair use and how does it relate to artificial intelligence?
The doctrine of fair use is a fundamental part of copyright law, part of the Copyright Act 1976. Fair use allows people to use copyrighted content without the owner’s express permission for specific purposes. In the pre-AI era, instances of fair use included a teacher using a copyrighted book for educational purposes or a reporter referencing a copyrighted work in news coverage. There are four factors that help determine whether someone’s use can be considered fair use, including:
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Purpose of use: How can someone using copyrighted material use it? Commercial interests – whether someone can make money from the use – are important here.
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Nature of the copyrighted work: What does the contested work actually look like – is it factual like a newspaper article or highly creative like a work of art?
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Size and importance of use: How much of a copyrighted work would someone want to use? Even if it’s simple, if it’s the “essence of the work,” it may not qualify as a fair use defense.
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Impact on the market: By using a copyrighted work in a proposed way, will it compete with the original author? What impact does this have on the larger market?
There are questions about every factor when it comes to fair use and AI, said Christian Mammen, an intellectual property attorney and managing partner of Womble Bond Dickinson’s San Francisco office. There is also debate about whether fair use factors apply to AI inputs, AI outputs, or both.
“Does that apply to the input side, where you take all the work in that training data, or does it apply to the output side, where there might be a tiny, unrecognizable effect of any given work on the output?” Mamin said.
Tech companies are pushing hard for the fair use exception because it would allow them to use copyrighted content without contacting each rights holder and paying licensing fees. For companies like OpenAI and Google — which have already spent billions of dollars on development — the fair use exception would save a lot of time and money.
Google He said (PDF) That fair use will allow it to continue innovating quickly; OpenAI took a parallel approach and He said Unhindered AI innovation is a matter of national security. Copyright Office I focused mainly on the issue of fair useSaying in its third report that there may be cases where a fair use case can be made, but there are times when the necessary criteria are not met.
We’ve seen two major lawsuits agreeing with AI companies that their use of copyrighted books is fair use. Anthropic She won her caseThe judge deemed his use of copyrighted books “highly transformative.” However, authors whose works have been allegedly pirated, Compensation can be obtained As part of a $1.5 billion settlement. Two days after Anthropic’s win Meta won In a similar case.
Giving tech companies carte blanche to manipulate copyrighted content is not something content creators are interested in. In March, more than 400 writers, actors and directors participated I signed an open letter Request that the Trump administration not grant OpenAI and Google a fair use exception. they books That Google and OpenAI “request a special government exemption so they can freely exploit America’s creative and knowledge industries, despite their significant revenues and available funds. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate the copyright protections that have helped America thrive.”
What does all this mean for the future?
Copyright holders are on a bit of a wait at the moment. But beyond the legal and ethical implications, copyright in the age of AI raises important questions about the value of creative work, the cost of innovation, and the ways in which we need or should obtain government intervention and protection.
Mammen said there are two different ways to look at intellectual property laws in the United States. The first is that these laws were enacted to encourage and reward human flourishing. The other is more focused on the economic aspect; The things we make have value, and we want our economy to be able to recognize that value accordingly.
“For most of our history, the humanitarian approach and the industrial policy approach have aligned fairly well,” Mammen said. But generative AI has highlighted different approaches to copyright and intellectual property.
“Do these laws exist primarily as a matter of industrial economic policy, or do they exist as part of a humanistic approach that values and encourages human flourishing by rewarding creative human beings?” he asked. “At the highest, most abstract level, I would say this is one of the questions these discussions pose.”