ChatGPT maker OpenAI filed legal papers earlier this week seeking to dismiss elements of a copyright infringement lawsuit filed against it by three authors, including comedian and writer Sarah Silverman.
It stated that claims in the lawsuit of “vicarious copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unfair competition, ‘negligence’ and unjust enrichment” should be cut from the legal action, because “none of the legal theories challenged here actually condemns the conduct alleged with respect to ChatGPT, the language models that power it, or the process used to create them”.
Although not a music case, the music industry’s lawyers are watching closely any litigation focused on the legal obligations of AI companies that use copyright-protected works to train their AI models.
The music and wider copyright industries argue that any such usage requires consent from the copyright owner. But not all AI companies agree, with some reckoning that certain copyright exceptions – or the principle in US copyright law of ‘fair use’ – should apply.
Some tech companies also argue that some copyright owners are misunderstanding or misrepresenting how their technologies work.
In its legal filing, OpenAI claims that the three authors involved in the case “misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence”.
That said, this particular document deals more specifically with the elements of the lawsuit that OpenAI thinks should be immediately dismissed, rather than that bigger copyright debate. Though that does also involve some copyright issues, of course.
Why Should YOU Care?
For YOUR Label – The outcome of this lawsuit is still a long way away, especially with OpenAI’s move to dismiss part of the case, but its ramifications for your label makes it an important case to keep track of. This will potentially affect how your artist’s music is used to help future versions of AI learn to autonomously create.
For YOUR Industry – The push back from OpenAI shows that the imminent law making processes around AI models in the music industry will have fighters on both the side of the human creatives and on the side of the freedoms of the AI models themselves. The very meaning of a ‘creative process’ is changing and a ruling surrounding issues such as this case is crucial in building frameworks to hep protect all creators in the industry.