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Transcript

Professor of Law Cathay Y. N. Smith: Generative AI platforms allow users to input text descriptions into a text box and have the platform create images that relate to or closely follow along with the description of a user that they might put into the text box. To do this, these AI models and platforms scan the internet for visual images along with their captions and text descriptions to train these models in order to be able to pick up our text, a user's text description input in the box, and then output an image that closely describes or closely matches the description that a user inputs. There are going to be two copyright implications. One of them is the one that is currently being litigated in different federal courts throughout the United States and it's the question of whether or not the use of copyrighted works to train these AI models is copyright infringement. On the one hand, you have copyright owners who have said that it makes a—it makes a reproduction of our copyrighted work without our authorization. Right? You have not paid us, licensed our works in order to be used in these AI model trainings and so therefore, it's infringement. AI companies have argued that that use is considered copyright fair use and copyright fair use is an affirmative offense in the United States. And typically the purpose of it is to ensure that copyright law isn't being used to discourage the very creativity that copyright law is created to encourage. I think it's important for copyright law to strike a balance. You know, a law that was created and passed at a time when none of this technology existed or even was conceivable. If we too broadly apply that law, we could have consequences of shutting down this publicly beneficial model and platform. On the other hand, if we too narrowly apply copyright law, we could also see an instance where we discourage continued and future human creators from creating art or works of expression because everything that they create and attempt to disseminate gets immediately sort of consumed and scanned and reproduced into an AI platform, with works being created by users that compete directly with them.