The current AI boom from Bing and Midjourney relies on free access to training data, much of it scraped from the web and often copyrighted. The use of this data has led to both criticism and lawsuits, especially in the art world, with rights holders claiming their work is being misused without permission.
Some of the world’s biggest players in AI, like OpenAI, avoid scrutiny by simply refusing to reveal details of the data used to create their software. However, proposed legislation in the EU to regulate AI (the long-running and far-reaching AI law) could compel companies to disclose this information. Reuters and uactive.
The amendment was reportedly a late addition to the draft AI bill
Reuters A recent amendment to the AI Act, which was approved as a draft by lawmakers earlier this week, states that “companies deploying generative AI tools such as ChatGPT may not retain copyrighted material used to develop the system. It says it needs to be disclosed. early this month, uactive . Reuters, Citing a “source familiar with the discussion,” it said the proposed amendment was “a delayed addition made within the last two weeks.”
The details of this requirement are unknown and the law is subject to change during upcoming closed-door negotiations, known as the Tripartite Division, required to finalize the law. But if AI companies are forced to disclose the sources of their training data, it could open the door to a slew of lawsuits affecting some of the big names in technology.
Already, companies like Getty Images are suing image-generating AI for scraping data without permission, but there are also a handful of class-action lawsuits targeting image- and code-generating AI. But the makers of the biggest names in AI today, OpenAI, ChatGPT, GPT-4, and his DALL-E, the force behind Microsoft’s AI push is very secretive about its data sources. . The reported law could change this, providing evidence for litigation and potentially influencing debates between organizations such as media companies whose data is used and referenced by numerous chatbots.
The potential impact of the law will depend on its details, but the rest of the EU’s AI law is sure to have a similarly broad impact on the rapidly changing AI landscape.
The law categorizes AI systems based on perceived risks and requires companies responsible for building the most impactful tools to disclose key data about safety, interpretability, performance, and more. request. Like previous tech regulations driven by the EU, the AI law will undoubtedly have a global impact on how tech companies do business. EU lawmakers will continue to debate the details of the law throughout the year, although corporate compliance is unlikely to come into force until after 2025.
