In Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. ITutorGroup, Inc., et al., No. 1:22-CV-2565 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 9, 2023), the EEOC and a tutoring company filed a Joint Settlement Agreement and Consent Decree in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, memorializing a $365,000 settlement for claims involving hiring software that automatically rejected applicants based on their age. This is first EEOC settlement involving artificial intelligence (“AI”) software bias.
Artificial Intelligence Updates – 08.10.23
#HelloWorld. In this issue, the state of state AI laws (disclaimer: not our original phrase, although we wish it were). Deals for training data are in the works. And striking actors have made public their AI-related proposals—careful about those “Digital Replicas.” It’s August, but we’re not stopping. Let’s stay smart together.
Read more on The Artificial Intelligence Blog.
EEOC Guidance Discusses AI Impact in the Workplace
On July 26, 2023, the EEOC issued a new Guidance entitled “Visual Disabilities in the Workplace and the Americans with Disabilities Act” (the “Guidance”). This document is an excellent resource for employers, and provides insight into how to handle situations that may arise with job applicants and employees that have visual disabilities. Notably, for employers that use algorithms or artificial intelligence (“AI”) as a decision-making tool, the Guidance makes clear that employers have an obligation to make reasonable accommodations for applicants or employees with visual disabilities who request them in connection with these technologies.
Read more on the Class Action Defense Blog.
Artificial Intelligence Updates – 07.27.23
#HelloWorld. Copyright suits are as unrelenting as the summer heat, with no relief in the forecast. AI creators are working on voluntary commitments to watermark synthetic content. And meanwhile, is ChatGPT getting “stupider”? Lots to explore. Let’s stay smart together.
Read more on The Artificial Intelligence Blog.
AI Is Everywhere! Addressing the Legal Risks Through Contracting
You can’t look in the news or see social media posts each day without hearing about artificial intelligence in healthcare. In fact, the advancements in AI in healthcare are making leaps and bounds, seemingly with each day that goes by.
But nursing homes and assisted living providers need to understand not jus the benefits of how AI can improve quality of resident care and improved operations, but also the legal issues surrounding AI in your facility.
Read the full article by Duane Morris partner Neville M. Bilimoria on the McKnight’s Long-Term Care website.
Guidelines for Tech Use in Mergers
On July 19, 2023, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) jointly released draft Merger Guidelines to amend and update both the 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines and the Vertical Merger Guidelines that were issued in 2020 and later rescinded by the FTC in 2021.
The draft guidelines underscore recent enforcement efforts to rein in technology mergers. They target large platform providers, as well as mergers that might entrench or extend a dominant position (suggesting that a 30 percent share implies a dominant position). The draft guidelines focus on multisided platforms and competition between platforms, on the platform and to displace a platform. The agencies also specifically reference the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in assessing potential post-merger coordination. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.
Artificial Intelligence Updates – 07.13.23
#HelloWorld. Pushback and disruption are the themes of this edition as we look at objections to proposed regulation in Europe, an FTC investigation, the growing movement in support of uncensored chatbots, and how AI is disrupting online advertising. Let’s stay smart together.
Read more on The Artificial Intelligence Blog.
Artificial Intelligence Updates – 06.29.23
#HelloWorld. In the midst of summer, the pace of significant AI legal and regulatory news has mercifully slackened. With room to breathe, this issue points the lens in a different direction, at some of our persistent AI-related obsessions and recurrent themes. Let’s stay smart together.
Read more on The Artificial Intelligence Blog.
Guarding Your Digital Data Against AI Incursion
Digital data is becoming a hot commodity these days because it enables AI tools to do powerful things. Companies that offer content should keep up with the evolving technology and laws that can help them protect their online data.
As data becomes available online, it can be accessed in different ways leading to various legal issues. In general, one basis for protecting online data lies in the creativity of the data under the Copyright Act of 1976. Another basis lies in the technological barrier of the computer system hosting the data under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is also possible to protect online data based on contractual obligations or tort principles under state common law. In terms of the data, a company would need to consider its proprietary data and user-generated data separately, but any creative content is invariably entitled to copyright protection.
To read the full text of this article, please visit the Duane Morris Artificial Intelligence Blog.
Autonomous AI and the Question of Creativity
On March 16, 2023, the United States Copyright Office (USCO) published Copyright Registration Guidance (Guidance) on generative AI[1]. In the Guidance, the USCO reminded us that it “will not register works produced by a machine or mere mechanical process that operates randomly or automatically without any creative input or intervention from a human author.” This statement curiously conjures the notion of a machine creating copyrightable works autonomously.
While the operation of a machine, or specifically the execution of the underlying AI technology, may be largely mechanical with little human involvement, the design of the AI technology can take significant human effort. If we look at protecting human works that power machines as intellectual property in the broad context where AI has been applied, just like authorship has been an issue when an AI technology is used in creating copyrightable subject matter, inventorship has been an issue when an AI technology is used in generating an idea that may be eligible for patent protection.
To read the full text of this article, please visit the Duane Morris Artificial Intelligence Blog.