How Are Courts Approaching Copyrighted Materials and Artificial Intelligence?

Two groundbreaking decisions from the Northern District of California—Kadrey v. Meta Platforms, Inc. and Bartz v. Anthropic PBC—shed light on how courts are approaching the use of copyrighted materials in training large language models (LLMs). Both cases involved authors alleging copyright infringement based on the use of their books to train generative AI models, and both courts held that use of the copyrighted materials to train the AI models was transformative. The court in Anthropic held, however, that copying pirated books constitutes copyright infringement and the transformative nature of the use did not rescue such infringement. Conversely, the Meta court held that copying from pirate sites to train AI is fair use, but only because the plaintiffs failed to submit evidence of market harm, which the court believed to be the most relevant factor. As such, while use of copyrighted works to train AI may be fair use, copying works without permission carries the risk of infringement. Read the full Alert on the Duane Morris website.

Artificial Intelligence Tools and Copyright Infringement Issues During the Training Process

Duane Morris attorneys Jennifer LantzJeremy Elman and Max DiBaise authored the Bloomberg Law article, “Generative AI Training Case Flags Competition as Major Factor,” exploring what the Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence decision’s novel application of the “fair use” defense of copyright law means for generative AI training.

Companies must be mindful of the ultimate purpose of new artificial intelligence tools to avoid running into copyright infringement issues during the training process. If widely adopted, the Thomson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence decision suggests “intermediate copying” cases are unlikely to provide a strong defense when the final output of a tool mirrors the products it was trained on. Accordingly, the key question is likely to what extent the AI system is competing with the underlying copyrighted work. The further away the system is, the more likely it is to be protected under the fair-use doctrine. Read the full article on the Bloomberg Law website.

How Copyright Law Regards Artificial Intelligence

Duane Morris partner Agatha Liu is quoted in the Bloomberg Law article, “AI Art Appeal’s Procedural Flaws Put Broader Ruling in Doubt.”

An appeals court panel’s focus on procedural issues in a case involving efforts to copyright AI-generated work left attorneys concerned the judges may sidestep larger questions about how copyright law regards the emerging technology. […]

“The point of copyright protection is it should reward creativity. It should be associated with a human being, not a machine,” said Liu. “But there’s merit in claiming the creator of the machine being an author.”

Read the full article on the Bloomberg Law website.

A Gentle Primer on Generative AI Art Models

Duane Morris partner Aleksander J. Goranin authored the Art Business News article, “The Future of Digital Art as Training Material For Generative Artificial Intelligence Models,” which provides a reader-friendly introduction to the copyright and right-of-publicity issues raised by such AI model training, and offers practical tips about what art owners can do, currently, if they want to keep their works away from such training uses. Read the full article.

And the Copyright Registration Goes to… the AI Algorithm or the Machine?

The Copyright Registration Guidance  published by the United States Copyright Office in March mainly addressed whether a human providing simple prompts or other input to an artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm could obtain a copyright registration for the output that the AI algorithm generated based on the human input. … Now a few months later, a court has handed out a decision on whether to grant a copyright registration to the AI algorithm in Thaler v. Perlmutter, 1:22-cv-01564 (D.D.C).

Read the full post on the Artificial Intelligence Blog

Is AI Technology Creative?

On March 16, 2023, the United States Copyright Office (USCO) published Copyright Registration Guidance (Guidance) on generative AI. 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.

Read more on the Duane Morris Artificial Intelligence Blog.

A Copyright Alert about a Copyright Alert: Internet Service Providers Undertake a New Program

It’s good to be an Internet Service Provider. While content owners worry about piracy and erosion of copyright, and thus revenue, ISP’s (the companies that provide us with Internet access) do not have substantial copyright worries. They are considered, in effect, common carriers and as a result are generally no more liable for copyright infringement by its customers than the telephone company would be liable if you slander someone during a phone call. The concern is the copyright misbehavior of ISP customers, namely people like us.

Click here to read Mark Fischer’s blog entry on ISP’s and copyright issues.

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The opinions expressed on this blog are those of the author and are not to be construed as legal advice.

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