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a14 people & arts
Tuesday 21 November 2023
'Please regulate AI:' Artists push for U.S. copyright reforms but tech

industry says not so fast

ing the copyrighted work
into something different.
"The American AI industry is
built in part on the under-
standing that the Copyright
Act does not proscribe the
use of copyrighted mate-
rial to train Generative AI
models," says a letter from
Meta Platforms, the parent
company of Facebook, In-
stagram and WhatsApp.
The purpose of AI training is
to identify patterns "across
a broad body of content,"
not to "extract or repro-
duce" individual works, it
added.
So far, courts have largely
sided with tech companies
in interpreting how copy-
right laws should treat AI
systems. In a defeat for vi-
sual artists, a federal judge
in San Francisco last month
Actor and filmmaker Justine Bateman, right, speaks outside Netflix during a Writers Guild rally on July 13, 2023, in Los Angeles. dismissed much of the first
Associated Press big lawsuit against AI im-
By MATT O'BRIEN being, not a computer. tems, often without permis- giarism machine" before age-generators, though al-
AP Technology Writer And I myself am reading a sion or compensation. Hollywood is "coopted by lowed some of the case to
Country singers, romance large part of them." More than 9,700 comments greedy and craven com- proceed.
novelists, video game artists WHAT'S AT STAKE? were sent to the Copyright panies who want to take Most tech companies cite
and voice actors are ap- Perlmutter directs the U.S. Office, part of the Library of human talent out of enter- as precedent Google's
pealing to the U.S. govern- Copyright Office, which Congress, before an initial tainment." success in beating back
ment for relief — as soon as registered more than comment period closed The music industry is also legal challenges to its on-
possible — from the threat 480,000 copyrights last year in late October. Another threatened, said Nash- line book library. The U.S.
that artificial intelligence covering millions of individ- round of comments is due ville-based country song- Supreme Court in 2016 let
poses to their livelihoods. ual works but is increasingly by Dec. 6. After that, Perl- writer Marc Beeson, who's stand lower court rulings
"Please regulate AI. I'm being asked to register mutter's office will work to penned tunes for Carrie that rejected authors' claim
scared," wrote a podcaster works that are AI-generat- advise Congress and oth- Underwood and Garth that Google's digitizing of
concerned about his voice ed. So far, copyright claims ers on whether reforms are Brooks. Beeson said AI has millions of books and show-
being replicated by AI in for fully machine-gener- needed. potential to do good but "in ing snippets of them to the
one of thousands of letters ated content have been WHAT ARE ARTISTS SAYING? some ways, it's like a gun — public amounted to copy-
recently submitted to the soundly rejected because Addressing the "Ladies and in the wrong hands, with no right infringement.
U.S. Copyright Office. copyright laws are de- Gentlemen of the US Copy- parameters in place for its But that's a flawed com-
Technology companies, by signed to protect works of right Office," the "Family use, it could do irreparable parison, argued former
contrast, are largely happy human authorship. Ties" actor and filmmaker damage to one of the last law professor and bestsell-
with the status quo that But, Perlmutter asks, as hu- Justine Bateman said she true American art forms." ing romance author Heidi
has enabled them to gob- mans feed content into AI was disturbed that AI mod- While most commenters Bond, who writes under the
ble up published works to systems and give instruc- els were "ingesting 100 were individuals, their con- pen name Courtney Mi-
make their AI systems bet- tions to influence what years of film" and TV in a cerns were echoed by big lan. Bond said she agrees
ter at mimicking what hu- comes out, "is there a point way that could destroy the music publishers (Universal that "fair use encompass-
mans do. at which there's enough structure of the film business Music Group called the es the right to learn from
The nation's top copyright human involvement in con- and replace large portions way AI is trained "ravenous books," but Google Books
official hasn't yet taken trolling the expressive ele- of its labor pipeline. and poorly controlled") as obtained legitimate cop-
sides. She told The Associ- ments of the output that It "appears to many of us well as author groups and ies held by libraries and
ated Press she's listening the human can be consid- to be the largest copyright news organizations includ- institutions, whereas many
to everyone as her office ered to have contributed violation in the history of the ing the New York Times and AI developers are scrap-
weighs whether copyright authorship?" United States," Bateman The Associated Press. ing works of writing through
reforms are needed for a That's one question the wrote. "I sincerely hope you IS IT FAIR USE? "outright piracy."
new era of generative AI Copyright Office has put to can stop this practice of What leading tech compa- Perlmutter said this is what
tools that can spit out com- the public. A bigger one — thievery." nies like Google, Microsoft the Copyright Office is try-
pelling imagery, music, vid- the question that's fielded Airing some of the same AI and ChatGPT-maker Ope- ing to help sort out.
eo and passages of text. thousands of comments concerns that fueled this nAI are telling the Copyright "Certainly this differs in
"We've received close to from creative professions — year's Hollywood strikes, Office is that their training some respects from the
10,000 comments," said Shi- is what to do about copy- television showrunner Lilla of AI models fits into the "fair Google situation," Perlmut-
ra Perlmutter, the U.S. reg- righted human works that Zuckerman ("Poker Face") use" doctrine that allows for ter said. "Whether it differs
ister of copyrights, in an in- are being pulled from the said her industry should limited uses of copyrighted enough to rule out the fair
terview. "Every one of them internet and other sources declare war on what is materials such as for teach- use defense is the question
is being read by a human and ingested to train AI sys- "nothing more than a pla- ing, research or transform- in hand."q