GenAI tools ‘could not exist’ if firms are made to pay copyright | Computer Weekly
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Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic hits out at copyright lawsuit filed by music publishing corporations, claiming the content ingested into its models falls under ‘fair use’ and that any licensing regime created to manage its use of copyrighted material in training data would be too complex and costly to work in practice

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) company Anthropic has claimed to a US court that using copyrighted content in large language model (LLM) training data counts as “fair use”, however.

Under US law, “fair use” permits the limited use of copyrighted material without permission, for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research.

In October 2023, a host of music publishers including Concord, Universal Music Group and ABKCO initiated legal action against the Amazon- and Google-backed generative AI firm Anthropic, demanding potentially millions in damages for the allegedly “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”.

  • Chahk
    7•5 months ago

    I agree with you on principle. However… How long do you think it will be until these very same “AI” companies copyright and patent every piece of content their algorithms spew out? Will they abide by the same carve-outs they want for themselves right now? Somehow I doubt it.

    They want to ignore the laws for themselves, but enforce them onto everyone else. This “Rules for thee but not for me” bullshit can’t be allowed to pass. Let’s then abolish all copyright, and we’ll see how long these companies last when everyone can just grab their stuff “for learning”.

    • @[email protected]
      2•5 months ago

      How long before a self-owned AI company that does every administrative job better than humans because it trained on human behavior for 100 years?

      What do you think an entity like that would be capable of?

      • Chahk
        4•5 months ago

        A bit off-topic, but I’d be fine with that. The more mind-numbingly dumb work that computers can do for us, the less time we have to spend doing it ourselves. Administrative jobs holders disagree with this, but so did every person whose job and livelihood was replaced by automation, ever. UBI (universal basic income) is the only answer that will save all of us from starvation when automation eventually replaces us too.

        • @[email protected]
          2•5 months ago

          I agree with everything in your post but the simple truth is administrative jobs are the modern equivalent of fluff court positions handed out to the 2nd+ born children of nobles and the modern owner class will never give up that eternal source of easy wealth.

          Which is also why they fight so hard to keep anyone not in the owner class out of management.