Moves from tech companies

In a 45-minute speech at OpenAI's first developer conference in early November 2023, CEO Sam Altman introduced a legal protection policy called "Copyright Shield."

“We will intervene and defend our customers and cover the costs incurred if you face legal claims related to copyright infringement,” says Sam Altman.

OpenAI is confident it can defend its customers legally — especially as copyright lawsuits from writers, record labels, and comedians continue to hit Silicon Valley (as tech companies use content from the web to train chatbots and image-generating services).

OpenAI CEO firmly asserts that OpenAI will pay for copyright lawsuits: "We are very confident in our approach, but we want to share that confidence with developers."

In fact, OpenAI is late to the compensation game, according to Bloomberg…

In June, Adobe announced it would defend customers from intellectual property lawsuits related to the use of its AI image-generating tool, Firefly. Meanwhile, Microsoft followed suit in September with its “Copyright Copilot” pledge, promising to pay settlements if customers are sued for using or distributing AI-generated documents in software like Windows, Word, PowerPoint, and the Github code generator Copilot. Last month, Google also announced legal protections for users of its AI services. “If you are sued for copyright, we will take responsibility for the legal risks involved,” Google said in its announcement.

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AI Tool Users and “Protection” Against Lawsuits

However, these policies only apply to commercial customers who pay for services like ChatGPT Enterprise and Firefly for Business. These premium options may include additional protections to prevent misuse of copyrighted material in the first place.

Conversely, if a user is using a free service like Dall-E and creates a piece of art that includes a likeness of Mickey Mouse; then puts it on a billboard and gets sued by Disney; the protections won’t apply. Similarly, if a ChatGPT user asks the chatbot to create a new trademark that includes the phrase “Just Do It,” OpenAI’s lawyers won’t come to the rescue.

“I can’t just ask the system to create a Banksy-like piece and then take that piece and sell it as a great Banksy product,” explained Brenda Leong, a partner at Luminos Law, a firm that specializes in AI issues. Indemnification provisions only apply to specific business models and customers of certain versions that companies offer, she said. “They have built a lot of controls into these systems to make sure that no protected information is leaked,” said Brenda Leong.

It’s also worth noting that current lawsuits from writers and creators are primarily targeting data used to train AI, such as books, open source code, and copyrighted images. Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have policies in place to protect against lawsuits related to AI-generated products, and so far no lawsuits have been filed against AI users for copyright infringement caused by AI.

All of this suggests that the new policies and the accompanying marketing are working: they help to assuage companies’ concerns and encourage them to adopt generative AI tools for business. In-house lawyers at these companies often worry when they see news of copyright lawsuits, and worry that copyrighted source code or intellectual property could be inadvertently incorporated into products, creating serious legal problems down the road. These are the same concerns that arose in the early days of the open source movement, before companies like Red Hat introduced the same protections that AI companies employ today.

Leong said she has seen the impact of these compensation policies in action. One of her clients, a consultant, had previously used Adobe’s Firefly to develop new ideas, but was adamant about not including any AI imagery in the product it sent to the client. However, after Adobe announced its protection policy this past summer, the client lifted the ban.

“This policy has changed their attitude towards using AI tools… They feel more protected when using them,” Leong added.

The topic of copyright is a selected topic in the Artificial Intelligence Contest 2024 (season 2) - Vietnam AI Contest 2024, where contestants can freely explore and create new ideas, applying artificial intelligence in protecting copyrights and works.

For detailed information about the contest, candidates can access the channels:

Fanpage “VLAB Innovation”: https://www.facebook.com/vlabinnovation/

Website: vlabinnovation.com

(According to: Bloomberg)