On December 9, OpenAI made its AI video generation model Sora available to the public in the United States and other countries.
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The UK is putting in place measures to regulate technology companies' use of copyrighted content to train their AI models.
The British government on Tuesday launched a consultation aimed at increasing clarity for both the creative industries and AI developers when it comes to how intellectual property is acquired and then used by AI companies for training purposes.
Some artists and publishers are unhappy with the way their content is freely mined by companies like OpenAI and Google to train their large language models — AI models trained on massive amounts of data to generate human-like responses.
Large language models are the core technology behind today's generative AI systems, including the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude.
last year, New York Times File a lawsuit against Microsoft And OpenAI, which accuses the companies of violating its copyrights and misusing intellectual property to train large language models.
In response, OpenAI disputed the New York Times' claims, stating that using open web data to train AI models should be considered “fair use” and that it offers an “opt-out” to rights holders “because it's the right thing to do.” “
Separately, image distribution platform Getty Images has sued another AI company, Stable AI, in the UK, accusing it of copying millions of images from its websites without consent to train its Stable Diffusion AI model. Stability AI disputed the lawsuit, noting that the training and development of its model took place outside the United Kingdom
Proposals to be considered
Firstly, the consultation will consider the possibility of an exception to copyright law for AI training when used in the context of commercial purposes while allowing rights holders to reserve their rights so they can control the use of their content.
Second, the consultation will put forward proposed measures to help creators obtain a license and reward for the use of their content by AI model makers, as well as giving AI developers clarity on what materials can be used to train their models.
The government said the creative industries and technology companies must do more to ensure any rights and transparency standards and requirements are effective, accessible and widely adopted.
The government is also considering proposals that would require AI model makers to be more transparent about their model training datasets and how they obtain them so rights holders can understand when and how their content was used to train AI.
Controversial as it may be, tech companies are not particularly forthcoming when it comes to what data feeds their coveted algorithms or how to train them, given the commercial sensitivities involved in revealing those secrets to potential competitors.
Previously, under former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the government attempted to agree a voluntary code of practice for copyright for AI.
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In a recent interview with CNBC, the head of app development software company Appian said he believes the UK is well placed to be a “global leader on this issue.”
“The UK has put a stake in the ground declaring prioritization of personal intellectual property rights,” Appian CEO Matt Calkins told CNBC. He cited the Data Protection Act 2018 as an example of how the UK is “closely linked to intellectual property rights”.
Calkins added that the UK also “is not subject to the same overwhelming pressure campaign from domestic AI leaders as the US,” meaning it may not be as susceptible to caving in to pressure from tech giants as politicians in the US.
“In the United States, anyone writing a law about artificial intelligence is going to hear from Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, or Google before that bill gets to the floor,” Calkins said.
“This is a powerful force that prevents anyone from writing sensible legislation or protecting the rights of individuals whose intellectual property is being seized wholesale by these major AI players.”
The issue of potential copyright infringement by AI companies is becoming more apparent as technology companies move toward a more “multimedia” form of AI — that is, AI systems that can understand and create content in the form of images and videos as well as text. .
Last week, OpenAI made its AI video generation model Sora publicly available in the US and “most countries globally.” The tool allows the user to write the desired scene and produce a high-definition video.
