OpenAI announced pacts with two more media companies — Vox Media and The Atlantic — to license their content for the ChatGPT artificial-intelligence chatbot. Under the deals, the companies also will work with OpenAI on a range of product-development initiatives.
Source: OpenAI Inks Licensing Deals to Bring Vox Media, The Atlantic Content to ChatGPT
An exemption under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act should be expanded to include generative artificial intelligence research focused specifically on embedded biases in AI systems and models, a top Senate Democrat argued in a new letter to the Library of Congress.
Source: Senate Democrat pushes for expansion to copyright act to include generative AI research
News Corp.’s deal with OpenAI supports the contention by the New York Times that publishers should be paid when their work is used for AI, Times lawyers say. “The Times is pleased to see that OpenAI increasingly acknowledges this industry-wide problem and is paying publishers for their work,” a Times spokesperson told Legaltech News.
Source: Publishers Daily: News Corp. Deal With OpenAI Proves ‘NY Times’ Suit Is Right, Lawyers Say
The seemingly endless possibilities of generative AI are not on an unavoidable collision course with copyright law; the collision happened way back and sooner or later, someone will have to pick up the bill. In the meantime, popular LLMs seem to be developing a stubborn, pro-copyright streak, partly due to all the industry propaganda they’ve been consuming. But don’t fight back, it’s time to team up.
Source: AI Models Reveal Pro-Copyright Bias By Shutting Down Piracy Research * TorrentFreak
Financial Times chief executive John Ridding has told other news publishers they “have leverage and should insist on payment” from AI companies. His words for the industry at the WAN-IFRA World News Media Congress in Copenhagen came one month after the Financial Times became the first UK news publisher to announce a licensing deal with OpenAI.
Source: FT CEO: News orgs ‘have leverage and should insist on payment’ from AI companies
Content from News Corp publications — which include the Wall Street Journal — is coming to OpenAI under a new multiyear licensing deal. Under the partnership, OpenAI has permission to display content from News Corp’s publications in response to user questions and to enhance its products, with the “ultimate objective of providing people the ability to make informed choices based on reliable information and news sources,” according to News Corp.
Source: News Corp Inks OpenAI Licensing Deal Potentially Worth More Than $250 Million
A research team led by the University of Texas has come up with a model called Ambient Diffusion which they claim “gets around” the issue of copyright and AI image generators by feeding the model images that have pixels missing — in some cases as much as 93%. “Early efforts suggest the framework is able to continue to generate high-quality samples without ever seeing anything that’s recognizable as the original source images,” reads a press release.
Source: AI Image Generator Avoids Copyright Issues by Training on Corrupted Photos
San Francisco-based blockchain-powered music platform Audius has partnered with rights administration platform Music Reports to power the licensing of rights and payments to music publishers through its Songdex Marketplace opt-in licensing platform. The new partnership follows Audius’ launch of its music marketplace last year, which provides a platform for its 6 million users to support artists with direct payments.
Source: Audius partners with Music Reports to power rights clearances for music publishers
Sony Music Group last week began sending legal letters to roughly 700 AI developers and music streaming services demanding detailed information on whether, how and by what means the recipients or their affiliates have used SMG-owned content “to train, develop or commercialize any of your AI systems,” and a “description of the manner in which such SMG Content was accessed and/or reproduced and/or extracted by you or your affiliates or any third party contracted to do so on your behalf.”
The text of the letters has not yet been released publicly. Sony separately posted a “Declaration of AI Training Opt-Out” on its website.
Company reports to have distributed more than €1bn to rightsholders in a consecutive 12-month period for the first time. With this distribution milestone passed, ICE says that it has now delivered a total of€4.5 billion (approx $4.88bn at current exchange rates) since its first royalty distributions in 2016. ICE was formed by three collection societies — PRS for Music (UK), STIM (Sweden) and GEMA (Germany).
Source: Pan-European licensing hub ICE Services has paid out $4.88bn to rightsholders to date