In the US, similar legal battles are ongoing, with the New York Times suing OpenAI and Microsoft for using its news articles as training data for their AI systems. Getty Images, in partnership with Nvidia, has developed its own image generation AI, trained exclusively on licensed imagery, countering the argument that AI technologies cannot function without using copyrighted materials. Peters believes that the producers and distributors of AI code, being legal entities, are subject to copyright laws, and that individual responsibility plays a role in the use of copyrighted material.
Key takeaways:
- Getty Images CEO, Craig Peters, has criticized the UK government's support for AI companies using copyrighted material for training data, suggesting it's a risky gamble compared to backing the creative industries which contribute significantly more to the UK's GDP.
- Getty Images is currently suing several AI image generators in the UK and US for copyright infringement.
- In the US, the New York Times has also sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using its news stories as training data for their AI systems.
- Despite these legal challenges, some AI models have been released open source, making it difficult to regulate the use of copyrighted material in training new systems.