Andrew Limbong, NPR ; The U.S. Copyright Office used to be fairly low-drama. Not anymore
"The U.S. Copyright Office is normally a quiet place. It mostly exists to register materials for copyright and advise members of Congress on copyright issues. Experts and insiders used words like "stable" and "sleepy" to describe the agency. Not anymore...
Inside the AI report
That big bombshell report on generative AI and copyright can be summed up like this – in some instances, using copyrighted material to train AI models could count as fair use. In other cases, it wouldn't.
The conclusion of the report says this: "Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs—all of which can affect the market."
"It's very even keeled," said Keith Kupferschmid, CEO of the Copyright Alliance, a group that represents artists and publishers pushing for stronger copyright laws.
Kupferschmid said the report avoids generalizations and takes arguments on a case-by-case basis.
"Perlmutter was beloved, no matter whether you agreed with her or not, because she did the hard work," Kupferschmid said. "She always was very thoughtful and considered all these different viewpoints."
It remains to be seen how the report will be used in the dozens of legal cases over copyright and AI usage."