If you care about books, movies, music or anything that would be considered original content, you are going to need to begin caring about law. Here’s why.
The recent development of generative AI, like ChatGPT, has only been possible because these algorithms have been trained on massive amounts of human generated content. In the case of a large language model, like ChatGPT, this means virtually every piece of writing that resides on the Internet. But not all text is created equal.
Some, like government documents and literary classics, are public domain, meaning that they can be copied and reused without infringing on anyone’s intellectual property rights. Others are protected by copyright and therefore can only be reused if one obtains permission or negotiates a licensing agreement. And it turns out that many of the currently available generative AI systems have been trained on digital content without necessarily paying attention to this difference. This is the point of contention in a number of lawsuits currently working their way through the courts.
So why should you care? If the plaintiffs in these cases—the artists, writers, and publishers—are successful, this could put the brakes on things, meaning that ChatGPT goes no further or becomes very expensive to operate. If the defendants are victorious, this will have repercussions not only for human artists and content creators, who could find themselves competing against the AI for work, but for copyright protections across the board.
It may not be the most exciting courtroom drama, but the outcome will definitely be dramatic.