2024 will be the year of lawsuits against generative AI companies. We’ve already had the GitHub Copilot case over assisted coding (https://lnkd.in/eH8Ap-eJ) and the Anthropic case over AI lyrics (https://lnkd.in/eY6UF9Cn). Now the Times joins the fray (https://lnkd.in/e8wHHMzx), and more are likely to follow.
So far, Gen AI companies have defended themselves by arguing fair use and transformative use – that their models create something substantially new and serve a different purpose than the original (thus doesn’t substitute the original, as in Google Books). But recent Supreme Court decisions such as Warhol v. Goldsmith made clear that transformative use claims face high bars.
What might come next?
– New business models for content licensing
– Restrictions on public access to some internal models
– Calls for updated copyright laws and content use regulations
– Technical solutions like attribution, data provenance, and content tagging
– What else?