The Global Reckoning: How Copyright Lawsuits Are Defining AI's Future
Several authors of copyrighted books have filed class action lawsuits against major tech market players, alleging systematic copyright infringement. The allegations stem from tech companies’ unauthorised use of copyrighted content to develop large language models (“LLMs”), which provide these tech companies a competitive edge in the Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) market.
Legal Battles in the AI World
Asian News International (“ANI”) Media has filed a similar suit [1] in the Delhi High Court against OpenAI Inc. alleging copyright infringement and claiming that OpenAI scraped and used its media content without proper permission or consent to train its LLMs, including the AI chatbot, ChatGPT.
Allegations against tech companies suggest that they train LLMs by harvesting content from the copyrighted books authored by the plaintiffs without seeking proper authorisation or providing any compensation. The training process allegedly involves seeking the assistance of shadow libraries—online digital repositories of pirated books—to gain access to authors’ copyrighted works and various other copyrighted material.
The Debate on Fair Use
Plaintiffs have also alleged the use of BitTorrent to amass an extensive collection of unauthorised literary works, potentially constituting direct copyright infringement. They have also accused these tech companies of functioning as distributors of these pirated works, thereby exacerbating copyright violations throughout the digital ecosystem.
In response, the tech companies defended their actions by asserting “fair use”, claiming that the use of copyrighted works of author to train their LLMs was transformative in nature and did not directly compare with the original material. They also argued that the usage of “publicly available” content to train the LLMs was shielded by the fair use doctrine.
Challenges and Implications
Until legal issues are determined globally and to avoid litigation, companies developing AI should adopt best practices for data collection and documentation. Some options for AI companies to ensure compliance and stay out of legal trouble include developing “opt-out mechanisms” to enable authors to exclude their works from training datasets or exploring licensing agreements with copyright holders.
These cases represent a watershed moment in the evolving relationship between AI and intellectual property law. Given that the copyright holders have substantial leverage in such disputes, it is imperative that the content creators and right holders assert their intellectual property rights through appropriate channels by taking proactive measures against potential infringement. Simultaneously, tech companies must approach content acquisition with extreme caution, as copyright violations could expose them to both civil liability and criminal prosecution.
