At the 30th anniversary event for WIRED magazine, Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild, argued that the use of their material by AI could destroy the profession of writing. Mike Masnick, CEO of Techdirt blog and the Copia Institute, disagreed, stating that generative AI is fair use and likened the situation to past legal disputes. Matthew Butterick, a lawyer who has filed lawsuits against generative AI companies, believes the debate is about tech companies trying to gain more power.
Key takeaways:
- Book authors, artists, and coders are challenging the practice of using their work to train AI models, arguing that it violates copyright laws.
- AI builders have assumed that using copyrighted material as training data is legal under the umbrella of “fair use,” but creators are increasingly disputing this as AI tools are able to mimic works in their training data.
- The Authors Guild, representing book authors, is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for violating the copyright of its members and believes that AI training should require permission and potentially a licensing fee.
- Mike Masnick, CEO of the Techdirt blog and the Copia Institute, argues that generative AI is fair use and that requiring tech companies to pay artists would further entrench the largest AI players by making it too expensive for smaller companies to train their systems.