The AI Copyright Conundrum: Are Machines the New Pirates?

How-To Avoid Unknowingly Using AI Tools That Infringe on IP

Read Time: 5 minutes

No marketer wants to get sued. I’m not a lawyer, but I try to follow the various ongoing cases, as I believe this is the first area of AI regulation.

In June 1999 Napster launched, and it was sued out of existence a just two years later. This week, one of my favorite AI audio apps, Suno.com, got hit with similar lawsuits.

Or worse yet, are you going to get hit with a demand from a lawyer for using these generative tools to create infringing material unknowingly?

Lets dig in…Who is suing over AI?

Today At a Glance 👀

• The Lawsuit Tea: Who’s suing who?
• Why being a paying user is so important
• The law-abiding marketer’s to-do list ✔

The Lawsuit tea 👀

Authors Guild vs. OpenAI

This class-action lawsuit involves 17 prominent authors, including George R.R. Martin and John Grisham, who allege that OpenAI used their copyrighted works without permission to train its language models.

The New York Times vs. OpenAI

The New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, accusing the company of using its articles without permission to train ChatGPT. The complaint includes examples of ChatGPT generating outputs that closely mimic the Times’ articles, highlighting potential copyright infringement.

The Intercept, Raw Story, and AlterNet vs. OpenAI & Google

These digital publishers have filed separate lawsuits against OpenAI, alleging that their articles were used without authorization to train ChatGPT. They accuse OpenAI of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by stripping away copyright management information from their works.

Center for Investigative Reporting vs. OpenAI

The parent company of Mother Jones and Reveal has sued OpenAI for unauthorized use of their content on AI platforms. This lawsuit marks another front in the battle between news publications and AI companies over the use of journalistic content .

Eight newspapers, including The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post vs. OpenAI

Alleging OpenAI trained on their news articles to create ChatGPT.

Class Action Lawsuit Over AI Training Data

Google has been sued in a class action for allegedly scraping data from various online platforms without permission to train its AI models. The plaintiffs, who remain unnamed, accuse Google of illegally accessing content from social media platforms, subscription-based websites, and other online services.

…And the list of lawsuits goes on.

Any reasonable CFO or General Council should be concerned.

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BEing a paying user matters 💸

My advice?

You are indemnified if you are a paying user or enterprise user of most AI services: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI.

This is one reason I HIGHLY recommend that students in my classes at UNH use the paid version where possible.

If you are a creator, author, or musician, you must get paid for your IP. We have models today like ASCAP & BMI that manage the payment to artists on 25 Million songs. Which provides a blueprint for artists to get the money.

Ultimately, many of these lawsuits concern control, business models, and whether content creators end up with digital pennies and AI companies with the gold.

So, what’s a law-abiding marketer to do? 🤓

Download the ultimate checklist for the law-abiding marketer here.

If in doubt, ask a lawyer in your life.

AI will be a moving target for the next several years, so get advice for your vertical area.

Remember, what passes in entertainment won’t fly in health care.

My wife and I have a house full of cousins this weekend…

She is a genius and purchased a water slide = tired kids.

Maybe we should send all the lawyers down one too? 😅