US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

Summary

The head of the US Copyright Office has reportedly been fired, the day after agency concluded that builders of AI models use of copyrighted material went beyond existing doctrines of fair use. The office’s opinion on fair use came in a draft of the third part of its report on copyright and artificial intelligence. The first part considered digital replicas and the second tackled whether it is possible to copyright the output of generative AI. The office published the draft [PDF] of Part 3, which addresses the use of copyrighted works in the development of generative AI systems, on May 9th. Copyright-ignoring AI scraper bots laugh at robots.txt so the IETF is trying to improve it READ MORE The draft notes that generative AI systems “draw on massive troves of data, including copyrighted works” and asks: “Do any of the acts involved require the copyright owners’ consent or compensation?” That question is the subject of several lawsuits, because developers of AI models have admitted to training their products on content scraped from the internet and other sources without compensating content creators or copyright owners. AI companies have argued fair use provisions of copyright law mean they did no wrong. As the report notes, one test courts use to determine fair use considers “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work”. If a judge finds an AI company’s use of copyrighted material doesn’t impact a market or value, fair use will apply. The report finds AI companies can’t sustain a fair use defense in the following circumstances: The office will soon publish a final version of Part 3 that it expects will emerge “without any substantive changes expected in the analysis or conclusions.” Tech law professor Blake. E Reid described the report as “very bad news for the AI companies in litigation” and “A straight-ticket loss for the AI companies”. Among the AI companies currently in litigation on copyright matters are Google, Meta, Open...