AI Developers Accused of Illegally Using News Content: News Media Alliance's Call for Justice
Summary:
The News Media Alliance (NMA) has accused AI developers of unlawfully using copyrighted news content to train AI models which, in turn, generate similar content, infringe on copyright laws, and compete with original news outlets. The NMA has called on the U.S. Copyright Office to acknowledge these issues and implement licensing models and transparency measures to curtail the use of copyrighted material. While the NMA recognizes the benefits of AI applications in journalism for tasks like proofreading and optimizing SEO, they maintain that the reward bias towards AI developers is problematic. Notable AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard face accusations of copyright infringements and legal battles.
Claims have emerged from a news industry association stating that creators of AI technologies are illicitly sourcing copyrighted material from news outlets and journalists as a method of training their AI systems. According to a white paper and related submission to the United States Copyright Office by the News Media Alliance (NMA) on October 30, the data sets utilized for training AI models have a significant bias towards comprising content from news publishers. The AI, in turn, generates content influenced by its training which infringes on copyright laws and puts AI systems in direct competition with original news outlets. The NMA further stressed on October 31 that numerous AI developers have opted to scrape content from publishers unlawfully for model training, creating competing products in real-time.
The alliance highlighted that while news publishers undertake risks and make substantial investments, the rewards in terms of users, data, brand presence, and advertising revenues predominantly benefit AI developers. The NMA mentioned in its Copyright Office submission that news publishers are also experiencing reduced revenues, decreased employment opportunities, and fragmenting relationships with their audiences due to the scenario. As solutions to these challenges, the NMA has urged the Copyright Office to recognize the harm inflicted on publishers because of AI platforms utilizing their original content for monetary benefits. Additionally, they called for the implementation of different licensing models and measures to increase transparency that could limit the incorporation of copyrighted materials into AI systems. The NMA also proposed enforcing steps to eliminate copyrighted content protection from third-party websites.
While recognizing the potential advantages of generative AI, the NMA highlighted that these systems can assist journalists and publications in tasks like proofreading, creative ideation, and optimizing search engine rankings. AI chatbot platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Anthropic’s Claude have grown popular over the preceding year, but their training methodologies have faced scrutiny for infringing copyrights. All three have faced legal challenges on this front.
OpenAI and Meta (previously Facebook) were sued by comedian Sarah Silverman in July, alleging that her copyrighted material was used to train the AI systems without her consent. Separate class-action lawsuits were also filed against Google and OpenAI, accusing them of scraping private user data from the web. Google has pledged to bear the legal consequences if it's customers are alleged to have infringed copyrights by using its AI products on Google Cloud and Workspace. This legal protection, however, doesn't extend to the Google Bard search tool. Neither OpenAI, nor Google have yet responded to requests for comments.
Published At
11/1/2023 4:24:02 AM
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