We are all owners of copyright. Why you should be interested in AI and Aupyright

Most of us do not think about copyright very often in our daily lives. But in the era of generative AI, it quickly became one of the most important problems in the development and results of chatbots and image and video generators. This is something that affects all of us because we are all owners of copyright and authors.

Unfortunately, copyright and AI are something a mess. The Development of the most modern AI models shows no signs of delay soon. To create these next -generation models, technology companies are looking for a very high -quality human content. They need these works to make their AI models better, whether this gives a chatbot a more realistic person or a generator of images, more artistic styles to refer to. On the reverse, AI enthusiasts may wonder if it is possible to get copyright protection for AI Creative Works.

Most AI companies were very unclear about what content they were using, which led to more than 30 drill cases that were turning their way through US courts. You may have heard of some of the most notable, such as New York Times vs Openai, In which the publisher claims that Chatgpt used reporters’ stories verbatim without proper attribution or authorization. (Discovery: Zif Davis, CNET’s Mother Company, in April filed a case against Openai, claiming that he had violated the copyright of Ziff Davis in the training and operation of his AI systems.) Meta is also in hot water recently, such as the Atlantica reported and published search database Of all copyright and potential pirate books, the company, which is said to have used without permission to train its AI.

I spend a lot of time thinking about copyright and AI in my work, taking into account AI Creative Services. I interviewed intellectual property lawyers, talked to many interested creators, and spent too much time destroying the legal part of government agencies. I used this experience to make this guide to what you need to know about the copyright in the AI ​​era, which will keep it updated while things change.

What is copyright?

Copyright is a set of expressed rights that protect “the original works of authorship, fixed in any tangible environment of expression, now known or later developed, from which they can be accepted, reproduced or otherwise communicated,” under the Copyright Act of 1976.

In other words, copyright is a legal protection that gives the original authors the rights and control over their original works. Copyright protection can be applied to books, art, music, movies, computer programs, blogs, architectural designs, plays, choreography and more. We are all owners of copyright. AS US Copyright Service He says, “After creating an original work and fixing it by taking a picture, writing a poem or blog or recording a new song, you are the author and the owner.”

There are several ways that copyright intersect with AI. From the output, people who use AI services such as chatbots and image generators want to know if their AI work is permissible to protect copyright. There are many concerns about AI companies that use copyrighted materials illegally. Here’s what we know so far.

Can I have a copyright image or text that I generated with AI?

As with many legal questions, the answer is: it depends.

Our guidelines on this issue come mainly from the US Copyright Service, the Federal Agency responsible for the copyright administration. The Service has released a series of AI reports and copyrights with its latest guidance. In the second report, the service maintained his position That the images and videos generated entirely by AI are not eligible for copyright protection.

However, a number of generative tools are already available to edit AI. These tools are not used to create wholesale, but they use Gen AI to do things like adding or removing objects, decorative participants, or refinement of audio and video. You can still register and potentially obtain copyright protection for AI-edited content, but you need to disclose your AI use. In portalYou can see in the notes how people used AI in creating their copyright work.

Can copyright content be used for AI training?

The basic prerequisite in the Copyright Act is that the rights holder – usually the original creator, sometimes in other cases can be an employer of a person – can decide how they want to use their works. In many cases, the owners choose to license their content; This allows people to use copyright, for a fee, with appropriate attribution. So, if the copyright owner wants to give AI company permission to use his AI model training content, there is nothing wrong or illegal about it. Many publishers, including the Financial Times and Axel Springer brands, have achieved multimillion -dollar deals with AI companies to do just that.

Problems arise when AI companies potentially use copyright content without first obtaining copyright holders. And this is argued that the creators have happened in many lawsuits, including a class action case led by a conceptual artist Snow Against stability AI. There are currently more than 30 active lawsuits between AI companies and creators about copyright concerns.

Decades of the Act on Copyright Act, a precedent said that such use, without permission, is not allowed. Some creators claim that technology companies have violated their copyrights. The violation arises when a copyright work is “reproduced, distributed, executed, publicly displayed or was done in derivative work” without the permission of the copyright holder, such as a copyright service determines it.

The courts will decide whether the use of copyright protected materials in the development of AI reaches the threshold of a violation. In the meantime, many technology companies are trying to follow an alternative solution: an exception to honest use.

What is fair use and what does it have to do with AI?

The doctrine of fair use is a major part of the Copyright Act, part of the Copyright Act of 1976. Frequent use allows people to use copyright content without the explicit permission of the holder for specific purposes. In the era before AI, the cases of fair use include a copyright teacher for educational purposes or a reporter who refers to copyrights on news coverage. There are four factors that help determine whether one’s use can qualify as honest, including:

1. The purpose of using: How does the man using copyright use it? Commercial interests – whether anyone can make money from use – they are important here.

2. The nature of copyright work: What is the actual format of controversial work – is it actually as an article of the newspaper or very creative as works of art?

3. The amount and essential of use: How many of the copyright protected work does anyone want to use? Even if it is just a little, if it is the “heart of work”, this may not be permissible for defense for honest use.

4. The effect on the market: Using an author -executed work in a proposed way, will this compete with the original author? And what effect will this have on the larger market?

There are questions about each factor when it comes to honest use and AI, Christian Mammen, an intellectual property lawyer and a managing partner at the Womble, Bond and Dickinson law firm, told me in an interview. There is also a debate about whether the factors of honest use are applied to the inlet of AI, production or both. “This applies by the entrance party where you accept all the work in this training data, or applies from the starting side where there may be unrecognizable, little influence from some specific work in the output?” said Mamen.

Technical companies insist on an exception to honest use as this would allow them to use copyright content without contacting any right holder and paying licensing fees. For companies like Openai and Google, which have already spent billions of dollars on development, an exception to honest use will save considerable time and money. Google said This honest use would allow him to quickly innovate; Openai has taken a parallel approach and said This unobstructed innovation is a matter of national security.

Giving CARTE Blanche technology companies to manage Amok with copyright content is not something that the creators are excited about. In March over 400 writers, actors and directors signed an open letter Ask the Trump Administration not to exception to Openai and Google Honest use. They wrote The fact that Google and Openai “argue for a special government release, so they can freely operate America’s creative and knowledge, despite their significant revenue and available resources. There is no reason to weaken or eliminate copyright protection that has helped America flourish.”

Copyright service essentially distributed on the issue of fair useSaying in their third report that there may be cases where fair use can be made, but there are times when this will not meet the necessary criteria. Without federal legislation, we will probably have to wait for some or all of these court decisions to set a new copyright precedent and honest use in the AI ​​era.

What does all this mean to the future?

Copyright owners so far are in a small behavior model. But in addition to the legal and ethical consequences, copyrights in the era of AI raise important questions about the value of creative work, the cost of innovation and the ways we need or we need to have state intervention and protection.

There are two different ways to look at the US intellectual property laws, Mamen said. The first is that these laws were adopted to promote and reward the human thriving. The other is more economically focused; The things we create have value and we want our economy to be able to recognize this value accordingly.

“During the bigger part of our history, the humanistic approach and the approach of industrial policy are quite well suited,” Mamen said. But the generative AI emphasized the various approaches to copyright and IP.

“Do these laws exist mainly as a matter of industrial economic policy or exist as part of a humanistic approach that appreciates and encourages the flourishing of man through the reward of human creators?” Mamen asked. “At the highest, most abstract level, I would say that this is one of the questions that are forced by these debates.”