Senators who have raised bipartisan outcry over the demise of newsrooms at the hands of Big Tech companies are rallying to protect journalism from the potentially fatal blow of artificial intelligence. They’re hoping to ensure that news organizations receive full compensation when algorithms are trained using news articles — and are urging colleagues to act before the twilight of human-generated news sets in.
Source: AI chatbots should pay for news, bipartisan Senate group says – Roll Call
The AI Act is clear on transparency requirements: Developers of “general-purpose” AI models will have to provide a “detailed summary of the content used for training” in order to “facilitate parties with legitimate interests, including copyright holders, to exercise and enforce their rights.” However, the law is less clear on what constitutes a “general-purpose” AI model: are AI models designed to create music, and trained primarily on music, “general purpose”?
Source: EU AI Act headed for parliamentary vote, with some copyright provisions still unclear
Copyright infringement hits home – a cautionary tale. Some of you may have seen the article by David Segal in the Sunday NY Times several weeks ago about a rather sordid copyright fracas in which I have been embroiled over the past few months. It’s a pretty wild story. If you don’t feel like reading the whole NYT article, here’s a brief summary of how it unfolded:
In a lawsuit filed Monday (Feb. 12) in Nashville federal court, The MLC seeks to recover the royalties that Pandora allegedly owes them and all associated late fees. The MLC is particularly concerned with “unusually low royalties per stream” reported and paid out by Pandora, starting in 2021 which they say is due to the exclusion of substantial “Service Provider Revenue and TCC for Pandora Free.”
Source: The MLC Sues Pandora to Recover Unpaid Royalties, Late Fees
Several authors, including comedian Sarah Silverman, have suffered an early loss in their copyright battle against OpenAI. The authors accused OpenAI of using pirated copies of their books to train its models. A California federal court dismissed the vicarious copyright infringement and DMCA violation claims. However, the lawsuit isn’t over yet.
Source: Court Dismisses Authors’ Copyright Infringement Claims Against OpenAI * TorrentFreak
While the tools are often complicated and time consuming, several AI companies provide creators with ways to opt their work out of training. Generative AI models depend on training datasets, and the companies behind them are motivated to avoid restricting those potential data pools. So while they often do allow artists to opt their work out, the process can be crude and labor intensive — especially if you have a sizable catalog of work.
The significant capital raise arrives as heat appears to be reentering the blockbuster music rights acquisition space. Over the past seven days, Billboard has reported that Sony Music Group recently agreed to buy a 50% stake in Michael Jackson‘s publishing and recorded music catalog for $600 million-plus, while the long-running potential sale of Queen’s music rights is also reportedly picking up pace.
The question of where AI sits in the legal personhood stack isn’t as simple as it may seem (i.e. “nowhere”) — but the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office today declared that, as with other intellectual property, only a person can receive its official protections. The news arrived via “guidance,” which is to say official policy but not ironclad rule, set to be entered into the federal register soon.
Source: US Patent Office: AI is all well and good, but only humans can patent things | TechCrunch
In an apparent attempt to undercut Taylor Swift’s potential influence on the presidential election later this year, former president Donald Trump issued a statement on his Truth Social platform Sunday claiming credit for the 2018 Music Modernization Act. However, Dina LaPolt, a key attorney behind the MMA, disputed Trump’s claims in a statement Sunday. “Trump did nothing on our legislation except sign it.”
Artists have secured a small but meaningful win in their lawsuit against generative artificial intelligence art generators. U.S. District Judge William Orrick, in an order issued on Thursday night, rebuffed arguments from StabilityAI, Midjourney and StabilityAI that they are entitled to a First Amendment defense arising under a California statute allowing for the early dismissal of claims intended to chill free speech.
Source: AI Companies Take Hit as Judge Says Artists Have “Public Interest” In Pursuing Lawsuits