"
That hasn’t worked so far as a winning legal strategy that can be used by other chatbot makers anticipating similar discovery demands in exploding chatbot-related litigation.
Instead, it threatens to turn attention to just how much information chatbots like ChatGPT are collecting and retaining about their users."
Nathan Smith, Anita Hodea Katten , The National Law Journal; Getty Images v. Stability AI- Intellectual Property Rights in the Age of Generative AI
"Key Takeaways
Jörn Poltz and Friederike Heine, Reuters ; OpenAI used song lyrics in violation of copyright laws, German court says
"OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT violated German copyright laws by reproducing lyrics from songs by best-selling musician Herbert Groenemeyer and others, a court ruled on Tuesday, in a closely watched case against the U.S. firm over its use of lyrics to train its language models.
The regional court in Munich found that the company trained its AI on protected content from nine German songs, including Groenemeyer's hits "Maenner" and "Bochum"."
Robert Booth , The Guardian; AI firm wins high court ruling after photo agency’s copyright claim
"A London-based artificial intelligence firm has won a landmark high court case examining the legality of AI models using vast troves of copyrighted data without permission.
Stability AI, whose directors include the Oscar-winning film-maker behind Avatar, James Cameron, successfully resisted a claim from Getty Images that it had infringed the international photo agency’s copyright.
The ruling is seen as a blow to copyright owners’ exclusive right to reap the rewards of their work, with one senior lawyer, Rebecca Newman, a legal director at Addleshaw Goddard, warning it means “the UK’s secondary copyright regime is not strong enough to protect its creators”."
Noah Berz , Rice Thresher; Photographer sues Rice after Coffeehouse uses copyrighted muffin photo
[Kip Currier: Another cautionary tale to not "scrape" stuff from the Internet and use it for one's commercial business.
(Oh, wait...that's what Big Tech did with billions of copyrighted works they "scraped" from the Web and pirate book libraries to develop their proprietary IP-protected AI products, too, right?)
At any rate, this "federal copyright-registered blueberry muffin photo" story is another reminder that it'll save you money, time, and possible reputational damage to do one of the following: take your own photo of a blueberry muffin; hire someone to do it; license a photo; or ask permission to use it.
And if you do use a photo for your business venture, give the photographer/copyright creator attribution...
Like this photo I took of my mother's delicious Iron Skillet Blueberry Scones!]
[Excerpt]
"A lawsuit has been filed against Rice, accusing Rice Coffeehouse of using a copyrighted photograph without permission to advertise on their Instagram page and website.
The Oct. 17 complaint was filed on behalf of Meggan Hill, a photographer and chef who posts her recipes online. The photo in question is a blueberry muffin photo, featured on Hill’s website with an accompanying recipe.
The lawsuit was filed in a Houston federal district court by Hill’s attorney, Layla Nguyen of SRipLaw, an intellectual property law firm based in Boca Raton, Florida. According to the case briefing, Hill tried to notify the university of her allegations twice before suing but received no response.
“To date, the parties have failed to resolve this matter,” the briefing reads. “Rice failed to respond to any communications.”
The lawsuit alleges that Chaus copied Hill’s photograph titled “Blueberry Muffins - Culinary Hill 1200x800” from the internet and displayed it online to promote the addition of blueberry muffins to their menu.
In the lawsuit, Hill claims she discovered the photograph on the Chaus website on Jan. 7 — over a year after she registered the image with the Register of Copyrights. Hill allegedly reached out to Rice with her complaint on Jan. 29 and Feb. 28 before filing the suit."
Jacob Shamsian, Business Insider; ChatGPT came up with a 'Game of Thrones' sequel idea. Now, a judge is letting George RR Martin sue for copyright infringement.
"When a federal judge decided to allow a sprawling class-action lawsuit against OpenAI to move forward, he read some "Game of Thrones" fan fiction.
In a court ruling Monday, US District Judge Sidney Stein said a ChatGPT-generated idea for a book in the still-unfinished "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R.R. Martin could have violated the author's copyright.
"A reasonable jury could find that the allegedly infringing outputs are substantially similar to plaintiffs' works," the judge said in the 18-page Manhattan federal court ruling."
Blake Brittain, Reuters; OpenAI loses bid to dismiss part of US authors' copyright lawsuit
"A New York federal judge has denied OpenAI's early request to dismiss authors' claims that text generated by OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT infringes their copyrights.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein said on Monday that the authors may be able to prove the text ChatGPT produces is similar enough to their work to violate their book copyrights."
MATT O’BRIEN, AP; Reddit sues AI company Perplexity and others for ‘industrial-scale’ scraping of user comments
"Social media platform Reddit sued the artificial intelligence company Perplexity AI and three other entities on Wednesday, alleging their involvement in an “industrial-scale, unlawful” economy to “scrape” the comments of millions of Reddit users for commercial gain.
Reddit’s lawsuit in a New York federal court takes aim at San Francisco-based Perplexity, maker of an AI chatbot and “answer engine” that competes with Google, ChatGPT and others in online search.
Also named in the lawsuit are Lithuanian data-scraping company Oxylabs UAB, a web domain called AWMProxy that Reddit describes as a “former Russian botnet,” and Texas-based startup SerpApi, which lists Perplexity as a customer on its website.
It’s the second such lawsuit from Reddit since it sued another major AI company, Anthropic, in June.
But the lawsuit filed Wednesday is different in the way that it confronts not just an AI company but the lesser-known services the AI industry relies on to acquire online writings needed to train AI chatbots."
Nicholas Kulish, The New York Times ; Is ‘The Pitt’ Really an ‘ER’ Spinoff? Michael Crichton’s Estate Says It Is.
The estate of the best-selling author, which has intellectual property rights to “ER,” and the creators of the new hit TV show are waging a legal battle over whether it’s a stealth reboot.
"On Nov. 4, the defendants asked the court to dismiss the complaint, citing their constitutional free speech rights and arguing that “The Pitt” is not a derivative work of “ER.” They emphasized that the new series is about the post-Covid world, reminding the judge that it deals with events that arose after Mr. Crichton’s death...
Rewatching “ER” through the lens of the lawsuit — as a jury might be asked to — can be a strange experience. Is the struggle over whether to put a dying elderly patient onto a ventilator a distinct plot point (this would support Team Crichton) or an everyday tragedy in a large urban hospital (Team Pitt)?
“‘The Pitt’ has no connection to ‘ER’ — it does not use ‘ER’’s intellectual property, characters, plot, setting or narrative pacing,” the defendants said. “While both series are medical dramas set in a hospital, this concept is hardly unique.” They name-checked “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Chicago Med,” “House” and “The Good Doctor.”...
The case “could serve as a model for how to figure out how much things are worth in the streaming space,” said Jennifer Porst, a professor of media industry studies at Emory University in Atlanta."
Anna Washenko, Engadget; Perplexity's definition of copyright gets it sued by the dictionary
Chloe Veltman , NPR; Anthropic settles with authors in first-of-its-kind AI copyright infringement lawsuit
"In one of the largest copyright settlements involving generative artificial intelligence, Anthropic AI, a leading company in the generative AI space, has agreed to pay $1.5 billion to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by a group of authors.
If the court approves the settlement, Anthropic will compensate authors around $3,000 for each of the estimated 500,000 books covered by the settlement.
The settlement, which U.S. Senior District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco will consider approving next week, is in a case that involved the first substantive decision on how fair use applies to generative AI systems. It also suggests an inflection point in the ongoing legal fights between the creative industries and the AI companies accused of illegally using artistic works to train the large language models that underpin their widely-used AI systems.
The fair use doctrine enables copyrighted works to be used by third parties without the copyright holder's consent in some circumstances, such as when illustrating a point in a news article. AI companies trying to make the case for the use of copyrighted works to train their generative AI models commonly invoke fair use. But authors and other creative industry plaintiffs have been pushing back.
"This landmark settlement will be the largest publicly reported copyright recovery in history," the settlement motion states, arguing that it will "provide meaningful compensation" to authors and "set a precedent of AI companies paying for their use of pirated websites."
"This settlement marks the beginning of a necessary evolution toward a legitimate, market-based licensing scheme for training data," said Cecilia Ziniti, a tech industry lawyer and former Ninth Circuit clerk who is not involved in this specific case but has been following it closely. "It's not the end of AI, but the start of a more mature, sustainable ecosystem where creators are compensated, much like how the music industry adapted to digital distribution.""
BEATRICE NOLAN, Fortune; Anthropic’s settlement with authors may be the ‘first domino to fall’ in AI copyright battles
"The amount of the settlement was not immediately disclosed, but legal experts not involved in the case said the figure could easily reach into the hundreds of millions. It’s also still unclear how the settlement will be distributed among various copyright holders, which could include large publishing houses as well as individual authors.
The case was the first certified class action against an AI company over the use of copyrighted materials, and the quick settlement, which came just one month after the judge ruled the case could proceed to trial as a class action, is a win for the authors, according to legal experts."
Kate Knobs, Wired ; Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors
"ANTHROPIC HAS REACHED a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in one of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history. The move will allow Anthropic to avoid what could have been a financially devastating outcome in court."
Adam Pitch, The Register ; Suetopia: Generative AI is a lawsuit waiting to happen to your business
"More and more US companies are using generative AI as a way to save money they might otherwise pay creative professionals. But they're not thinking about the legal bills.
You could be asking an AI to create public-facing communications for your company, such as a logo, promotional copy, or an entire website. If those materials happen to look like copyrighted works, you may be hearing from a lawyer.
"It's pretty clear that if you create something that's substantially similar to a copyrighted work that an infringement has occurred, unless it's for a fair use purpose," said Kit Walsh, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Director of AI and Access-to-Knowledge Legal Projects."
JOE WILKINS , Futurism; Using AI for Work Could Land You on the Receiving End of a Nasty Lawsuit
"For all its hype, artificial intelligence isn't without its psychological, environmental, and even spiritual hazards.
Perhaps the most pressing concern on an individual level, though, is that it puts users on the hook for a nearly infinite number of legal hazards — even at work, as it turns out.
A recent breakdown by The Register highlights the legal dangers of AI use, especially in corporate settings. If you use generative AI software to spit out graphics, press releases, logos, or videos, you and your employer could end up facing six-figure damages, the publication warns.
This is thanks to the vast archive of copyrighted data that virtually all commercial generative AI models are trained on.
The Register uses Nintendo's Mario as a prime example of how one might stumble, intentionally or not, into a massive copyright lawsuit, regardless of intent to infringe: if you use AI to generate a cutesy mascot for your plumbing company that looks too much like the iconic videogame character, you could easily find yourself in the legal crosshairs of the notoriously litigious corporation.
"The real harm comes from the attorney's fees that you can get saddled with," intellectual property lawyer Benjamin Bedrava told the publication. "Because you could have a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in attorney's fees over something where the license would have been fifteen hundred dollars.""
, NiemanLab; Japan’s largest newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun, sues AI startup Perplexity for copyright violations
"The Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper by circulation, has sued the generative AI startup Perplexity for copyright infringement. The lawsuit, filed in Tokyo District Court on August 7, marks the first copyright challenge by a major Japanese news publisher against an AI company.
The filing claims that Perplexity accessed 119,467 articles on Yomiuri’s site between February and June of this year, based on an analysis of its company server logs. Yomiuri alleges the scraping has been used by Perplexity to reproduce the newspaper’s copyrighted articles in responses to user queries without authorization.
In particular, the suit claims Perplexity has violated its “right of reproduction” and its “right to transmit to the public,” two tenets of Japanese law that give copyright holders control over the copying and distribution of their work. The suit seeks nearly $15 million in damages and demands that Perplexity stop reproducing its articles...
Japan’s copyright law allows AI developers to train models on copyrighted material without permission. This leeway is a direct result of a 2018 amendment to Japan’s Copyright Act, meant to encourage AI developmentin the country’s tech sector. The law does not, however, allow for wholesale reproduction of those works, or for AI developers to distribute copies in a way that will “unreasonably prejudice the interests of the copyright owner."
Blake Brittain , Reuters; Judge rejects Anthropic bid to appeal copyright ruling, postpone trial
"A federal judge in California has denied a request from Anthropic to immediately appeal a ruling that could place the artificial intelligence company on the hook for billions of dollars in damages for allegedly pirating authors' copyrighted books.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said on Monday that Anthropic must wait until after a scheduled December jury trial to appeal his decision that the company is not shielded from liability for pirating millions of books to train its AI-powered chatbot Claude."
ASHLEY BELANGER, Ars Technica ; AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified
"AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.
Last week, Anthropic petitioned to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said.
If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.
Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued."
James Michael Miller, ABA Litigation Section; Robot Art Riles Artists
"Visual artists have survived a motion to dismiss their class claims brought against generative artificial intelligence (AI) companies related to the companies’ use of the artists’ visual works without consent. The plaintiffs claimed that the defendants’ text-to-image AI products were trained in part on their copyrighted works. ABA Litigation Section leaders agree that the case sets up a showdown between copyright interests and the “democratization” of art through AI."
