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
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
OpenAI’s image generator DALL-E 3 will add watermarks to image metadata as more companies roll out support for standards from the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA). The company says watermarks from C2PA will appear in images generated on the ChatGPT website and the API for the DALL-E 3 model. Mobile users will get the watermarks by February 12th.
The standards could allow social media companies to quickly identify content generated with A.I. that has been posted to their platforms and allow them to add a label to that material. If adopted widely, the standards could help identify A.I.-generated content from companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft, Adobe, Midjourney and others that offer tools that allow people to quickly and easily create artificial posts.
Source: Meta Calls for Industry Effort to Label A.I.-Generated Content
The tech giant said on Thursday that it was joining an effort to develop credentials for digital content, a sort of “nutrition label” that identifies when and how a photograph, a video, an audio clip or another file was produced or altered — including with A.I. The company will collaborate with companies like Adobe, the BBC, Microsoft and Sony to fine-tune the technical standards.
Source: Google Joins Effort to Help Spot Content Made With A.I.
The technology would enhance the assessment of data about potential breaches and make it easier for lawsuits to be be brought. It will also lead to more evidence being available to the courts. But the increasing use of watermarking—which makes it easier to detect copying—and AI is also likely to mean a proliferation of small-scale disputes, experts have warned.
Source: Digital watermarks combined with AI will speed up copyright infringement cases, study says
The European Union’s 27 member states on Friday approved landmark rules on regulating artificial intelligence, passing a key last hurdle after tough negotiations to the very end. “We are very happy to announce that … ambassadors just unanimously confirmed the final compromise text found on the proposal on harmonised rules on artificial intelligence,” Belgium, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, said.
The Allen Institute for AI (AI2), the nonprofit AI research institute founded by late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, is releasing several GenAI language models it claims are more “open” than others — and, importantly, licensed in such a way that developers can use them unfettered for training, experimentation and even commercialization.
Source: AI2 open sources text-generating AI models — and the data used to train them | TechCrunch
The IFPI has joined a number of other organizations in voicing support for the EU’s AI Act ahead of a key vote on February 2nd. The organization, besides approximately 200 others from throughout “Europe’s creative and cultural sectors,” today penned the corresponding letter backing the AI Act. At present, the signatories’ desired outcome is Coreper approval of the bill.
Source: IFPI Voices Support for EU’s AI Act Ahead of Key Vote
BMG has announced its strategic partnership with the TUM School of Management, part of Munich’s Technical University, to fast-track the development of generative artificial intelligence within the company. The project will initially prioritize harnessing AI to creatively manage what the company calls an increasingly complex variety of digital assets required for global music marketing campaigns — sometimes up to 700 for a single project.
Source: BMG Says a ‘Single Project’ Can Involve Up to 700 Digital Assets