Last fall, we dove into the various lawsuits filed against leading AI tech companies over their alleged misuse of copyrighted content to train their Large Language Models (LLMs) to create chatbots (like OpenAI’s ChatGPT). Content creators, from famous authors to musicians, have filed lawsuits to stop AI platforms from using their protected works to develop AI technology. Those AI companies are fighting back against these lawsuits, asking the courts to toss them based on various legal arguments. Let’s get into the details.
Legal Arguments Against AI Platforms’ Use of Copyrighted Material
A slew of lawsuits has been filed over the past year in federal courts against AI tech companies over copyright infringement of creators’ original works. Copyright lawsuits concern federal claims and bypass state courts because they are under federal jurisdiction. Two significant lawsuits that span across the music and literary industries include Universal Music’s lawsuit against the Amazon and Google-backed company Anthropic and a class action lawsuit filed by a group of authors (including the famed Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin) against Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
The lawsuits accuse AI tech companies who produce Large Langue Models (LLM) based chatbots (such as Anthropic’s Claud 2 and Open AI’s ChatGPT) of infringing on creator’s protected, copyrighted works without getting permission from the creators and without compensating them for the use of their art –be it song lyrics or written works. Tech companies go through the process of ‘scraping’ data (in the form of massive amounts of text) from the internet to train their AI chatbots to spit out information when prompted by user questions.
The problem is that creators allege that these chatbots then regurgitate their original protected works, and the output is then marketed as original content created by the chatbots. Creators filed suit because they claim they are harmed by the fact that when chatbots are prompted to create a new piece of art, such as a song or a poem, the chatbot pulls lyrics or pieces of written works directly from copyrighted songs and publications, rather than creating an original narrative. When this happens, the new creation does not give credit to or include the corresponding artist or author of the original work –critical copyright information.
Because of this conflict, creators have joined together and filed suit against major tech companies seeking legal clarification on Copyright law and the definition of “fair use” when it applies to this new technology. For more context and background, check out this blog post. Let’s break down how tech companies are responding to these creator-led lawsuits.
Legal Arguments in Favor of Machine Learning
Last week, Anthropic asked the Tennessee Federal Court to reject the proposed injunction put forward by Universal Music. The lawyers for Anthropic argued that Universal Music “could not prove they were being irreparably harmed.” They claimed that “the publishers had brought their lawsuit against the company in the wrong court.” Back in November, the music publishers had “asked the court for a preliminary injunction to block the use of their copyrighted material to train Claude and force the company to implement ‘guardrails’ against reproducing their lyrics.”
Anthropic’s lawyers fired back, arguing that the company already had guardrails in place and that “if those measures failed in some instances in the past, that would have been a ‘bug,’ not a ‘feature’ of the product.” They further argued that the claims against Anthropic’s new generative AI tools “misconceive the technology and the law alike,” maintaining that generative AI (GAI) is not designed to output copyrighted material. Still, it’s a bug or a mistake if it does happen. Lawyers for Anthropic and other tech companies like it believe that creators have not provided evidence that the creation of these chatbots has harmed them –stating “there was ‘no evidence'” and that “[n]ormal people would not use one of the world’s most powerful and cutting-edge generative AI tools to show them what they could more reliably and quickly access using ubiquitous web browsers.” It will be interesting to see whether the court agrees with Anthropic’s argument and, more so, how they interpret Copyright law as it applies to new AI technology.
Challenges Confronting Courts in AI Lawsuits
Lawyers protecting tech companies who build AI chatbots by training them on data scraped from the internet will most likely argue that the Fair Use Doctrine allows tech companies to use the data and is no different from established copyright principles. Meanwhile, lawyers protecting the content creators will say the opposite, insisting that these companies infringe on artists’ rights and illegally profit from artists’ protected works to train their software, resulting in financial harm to the artists.
Courts will have to balance existing copyright laws and precedents against the rapidly changing AI tech industry to accommodate for tech innovation and advancement while at the same time protecting creators and ensuring that they are compensated for the use of their original works. These lawsuits shine a light on what happens when technology develops rapidly. The law must struggle to keep up –similar to what happened with the creation of the internet and what’s currently happening with social media lawsuits.
A hopeful, broad solution is one where attorneys for both sides can come to equitable solutions that protect innovation and creative license to ensure all parties are compensated for their part. Many argue that AI should be allowed to advance responsibly, without harming content creators, and still be able to operate in situations where the Fair Use Doctrine applies. However it’ll be up to the legislators and the courts to decide where that line is. Check back with the blog to see how the artist-led lawsuits against Anthropic and OpenAI over their chatbots plays out.
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Sources:
Music: Disruptor’s Dance by Anka Mason
Blog Narration: Anka Mason
