“It’s very Orwellian how the tech industry is trying to change the terminology for us. For us it’s not data or content, it’s music, it’s photos. It’s not file sharing, it’s theft – it’s It’s easy.” – Ashley Irwin
The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and the Internet today held the first of several planned hearings on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on intellectual property. The first hearing focused on copyright law. Witnesses included three artists, a professor, and a lawyer with varying perspectives on the issue, all of whom expressed the potential catastrophe that generative AI (GAI) applications would wreak on their respective industries and careers. expressed similar concerns about the impact of
Ashley Irwin, president of the Society of Composers and Lyricists, and Dan Navarro, a Grammy-nominated songwriter, singer, recording artist and voice actor, said at a later hearing that the works used He specifically took issue with the tech industry practices he mentioned. Let GAI “learn” as “data”.
“I appreciate the use of technology and jargon, but my music is not data,” Navarro said.
Irwin agreed, suggesting that the terminology tweaks may have been intentional. “I’m a little stressed that we call this ‘training’ because in our minds we’re training athletes and animals and not machines. Because it’s not,” Irwin said. “We equip machines with data, or ‘music’ as we like to call it. It’s very Orwellian how the tech industry tries to change the terminology for us. For us, it’s not data or content, it’s music and photos. It’s not file sharing, it’s theft – it’s that simple. ”
Chris Callison-Burch, Associate Professor of Computer and Information Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. A visiting scientist at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence said the first work on the large-scale language models behind OpenAI “put my career in an existential crisis.” He said the technology seemed to have solved many of the problems he had devoted his career to researching, and he wondered if there would be a role for academic research in the future. However, he has since “settled” and has a largely optimistic outlook on the ethical use of technology, but without swift and forward-thinking action to legislate for emergencies, Parallel A career like Regal “can go awry,” said Littener. In his written testimony, he said the role of Congress “can be as simple as providing retraining for retired occupations, or as complex as creating new jobs.” . [Works Progress Administration] WPA was established to provide jobs for victims of the Great Depression.
Cy Damr, a partner at Latham & Watkins and former general counsel for the U.S. Copyright Office, is more optimistic about the future of AI and copyright, saying that as the law mandates said that the existing law was sufficient to define the limits of the GAI. Prior to this, it was done for newer technologies such as VCR, Napster, and software APIs. At one point, Mr. Damr argued that GAI’s learning process is similar to that of humans, and that outcomes matter in terms of the application of copyright law. “The copyrighted work is not being used to create a collage, but to learn statistical facts about the work itself,” Damr said. “This is very similar to the process of human learning.” The difference, however, is that the GAI needs dozens of It requires a billion works.
In March of this year, the U.S. Copyright Office released a new policy statement on “works containing material generated by artificial intelligence,” following an increase in requests for review of works produced with GAI. In addition to the more high-profile examples, Zarya of the Dawn and Thaler The Patent Office will not allow any application that names an AI technology as the author or co-author of a work, or that contains a statement in the “created by the author” or “note to the Copyright Office” section of the application that: said it was received. The work was produced by or with the assistance of AI. Other applicants have not identified the inclusion of AI-generated material, but have mentioned the name of the AI technology in the title of the work or in the “Acknowledgments” section of the deposit.
Damle pointed out that the guidance deals with “one extreme” of the various scenarios in which GAI can be used to create work. “There will be a big gray area where humans and AI work together to create output,” said Damr. “I think it’s going to be a very common situation going forward.” He added that the situation where humans have some control over the output can be compared to how photographers operate and use cameras.
Jeffrey Cedric
, President and CEO of PLUS Coalition and a photographer himself, said: We expect it to continue to develop and we are open to it. Our concern is that our work is being used without permission. ”
The purpose of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee’s hearings is that some believe there is a need, or a way, to introduce legislation that will help compensate and protect artists from the threat of large-scale infringement caused by GAI. It was to determine whether there was The artists all agreed that they would not object to their work being used for GAI training, provided compensation was paid, but few expressed any opinion as to how it would be implemented. could not be comprehended by eyewitnesses.
Rep. Deborah Ross (D-North Carolina) said the industry’s record keeping of how and whether copyrighted works were used in GAI training We asked Karison Birch if it would help determine potential compensation schemes for artists. “The difficulty is that he has a trillion words worth of text in the training dataset, and each author represents only a tiny fraction of that,” she said. increase. The check will be very small, around 2 cents, he added, as the results will be determined based on each artist’s contribution.
But Ross also noted that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was out on a business trip this week, discussing how the new version of OpenAI will compensate copyright owners for content and style. suggested that According to Roth, “If the AI system uses your content and style while working on a new model, you get rewarded for that,” Altman said. “And Mr. Altman has a lot of money, so I hope he makes it through.” [with which] pay [artists]’ commented Ross.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (Republican, Calif.) said the GAI field is evolving so quickly that the agendas discussed in the hearings could become irrelevant before the subcommittee sets out to introduce solutions. said to be sexual. “As technology evolves, I fear that many of the issues we are discussing here will become obsolete within a few years,” he says.
Subcommittee Chair Darrell Issa (Republican, California) fears the GAI could ultimately have far-reaching implications for all areas of IP, inherently engulfing creativity and innovation. said it does. “Computers can generate an infinite number of combinations of copyrighted material. There is,” Issa said.
In his testimony, Irwin said it ultimately comes down to a “consent, credit and reward” model that ensures artists stay motivated to create.
“Ever since I was little, I have spent a lot of time doing what I was supposed to do and getting better at it… If machines can do it quickly, what motivates us to keep working? We love doing it, but at some point that love can no longer support our families.There has to be a way for us to coexist.”
