louise.lucas@ft.com, Financial Times ; Copyright battles loom over artists and AI
"Artists are the latest creative industry to gripe about the exploitative nature of artificial intelligence. More than 3,000 have written to protest against plans by Christie’s to auction art created using AI."
Danielle Coffey, USA Today; AI companies flaunt their theft. News media has to fight back – so we're suing. | Opinion
"Danielle Coffey is president & CEO of the News/Media Alliance, which represents 2,000 news and magazine media outlets worldwide...
This is not an anti-AI lawsuit or an effort to turn back the clock. We love technology. We use it in our businesses. Artificial intelligence will help us better serve our customers, but only if it respects intellectual property. That’s the remedy we’re seeking in court.
When it suits them, the AI companies assert similar claims to ours. Meta's lawsuit accused Bright Data of scraping data in violation of its terms of use. And Sam Altman of OpenAI has complained that DeepSeek illegally copied its algorithms.
Good actors, responsible technologies and potential legislation offer some hope for improving the situation. But what is urgently needed is what every market needs: reinforcement of legal protections against theft."
"More than a dozen major U.S. news organizations on Thursday said they were suing Cohere, an enterprise AI company, claiming the tech startup illegally repurposed their work and did so in a way that tarnished their brands.
Why it matters: The lawsuit represents the first official legal action against an AI company organized by the News Media Alliance — the largest news media trade group in the U.S...
Between the lines: The complaint was filed shortly after the U.S. Copyright Office changed its copyright registration processes to make them faster for digital publishers.
Because of those changes, Coffey explained, NMA and the publishers who are suing Cohere were able to identify thousands of specific examples of Cohere verbatim copying their copyright-protected works."
MATT GROWCOOT, PetaPixel; This is the First-Ever AI Image to Be Granted Copyright Protection
"A company has secured the first-ever copyright protection for an artwork entirely generated by AI from the U.S. Copyright Office.
Kent Keirsey, CEO of Invoke, demonstrated to the U.S. Copyright Office that he had inputted enough human creativity into the image to warrant protection.
Invoke is a generative AI platform for professional studios to create visual media. Keirsey used Invoke’s inpainting features to iterate upon an AI-generated image, coordinating and arranging where to inpaint and then selecting from multiple options to create a composite work which he calls A Single Piece of American Cheese. He added roughly 35 AI edits to the AI image."
Joseph A. Meckes, Joseph Grasser of Squire Patton Boggs (US) LLP - Global IP and Technology Law Blog, The National Law Review; Court: Training AI Model Based on Copyrighted Data Is Not Fair Use as a Matter of Law
"In what may turn out to be an influential decision, Judge Stephanos Bibas ruled as a matter of law in Thompson Reuters v. Ross Intelligence that creating short summaries of law to train Ross Intelligence’s artificial intelligence legal research application not only infringes Thompson Reuters’ copyrights as a matter of law but that the copying is not fair use. Judge Bibas had previously ruled that infringement and fair use were issues for the jury but changed his mind: “A smart man knows when he is right; a wise man knows when he is wrong.”
At issue in the case was whether Ross Intelligence directly infringed Thompson Reuters’ copyrights in its case law headnotes that are organized by Westlaw’s proprietary Key Number system. Thompson Reuters contended that Ross Intelligence’s contractor copied those headnotes to create “Bulk Memos.” Ross Intelligence used the Bulk Memos to train its competitive AI-powered legal research tool. Judge Bibas ruled that (i) the West headnotes were sufficiently original and creative to be copyrightable, and (ii) some of the Bulk Memos used by Ross were so similar that they infringed as a matter of law...
In other words, even if a work is selected entirely from the public domain, the simple act of selection is enough to give rise to copyright protection."
U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1062; U.S. Copyright Office Releases Publication Produced by Group of Economic Scholars Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy
"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Identifying the Economic Implications of Artificial Intelligence for Copyright Policy: Context and Direction for Economic Research. The publication, produced by a group of economic scholars, discusses the economic issues at the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright policy. The group engaged in several months of substantive discussions, consultation with technical experts, and research, culminating in a daylong roundtable event. Participants spent the subsequent months articulating and refining the roundtable discussions, resulting in today’s publication. The group’s goal was identifying the most consequential economic characteristics of AI and copyright and what factors may inform policy decisions.
"Development of AI technology has meaningful implications for the economic frameworks of copyright policy, and economists have only just begun to explore those," said Copyright Office Chief Economist Brent Lutes. "The Office convened an economic roundtable on AI and copyright policy with experts to help expediate research and coordinate the research community. The goal of this group’s work is to provide the broader economic research community a structured and rigorous framework for considering economic evidence."
This publication serves as a platform for articulating the ideas expressed by participants as part of the roundtable. All principal contributors submitted written materials summarizing the group’s prior discussions on a particular topic, with editorial support provided by the Office of the Chief Economist. The many ideas and views discussed in this project do not necessarily represent the views of every roundtable participant or their respective institutions. The U.S. Copyright Office does not take a position on these ideas for the purposes of this project."
Jorge Just , Vox; The public domain keeps culture vibrant. Why is it shrinking?
"Copyrights keep getting longer. What does that mean for art?"
David Gewirtz, Senior Contributing Editor, ZDNet; The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything
"Last week, the US Copyright Office released its detailed report and comprehensive guidelines on the issue of copyright protection and AI-generated work.
For a government legal document, it is a fascinating exploration of the intersection of artificial intelligence and the very concept of authorship and creativity. The study's authors conduct a deep dive, taking in comments from the general public and experts alike, and producing an analysis of what it means to creatively author a work.
They then explore the issue of whether an AI-generated work versus an AI-assisted work is subject to copyright protection, and what that means not only for individual authors but also for the encouragement of creativity and innovation in society as a whole.
This is the second of what will be a three-part report from the Copyright Office. Part 1, published last year, explored digital replicas, using digital technology to "realistically replicate" someone's voice or appearance.
Part 3 is expected to be released later this year. It will focus on the issues of training AIs using copyrighted works, aspects of licensing, and how liability might be allocated in cases where a spectacular AI failure can be attributed to training (which sometimes results in litigation)."
ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Copyright Office suggests AI copyright debate was settled in 1965
"For stakeholders who have been awaiting this guidance for months, the Copyright Office report may not change the law, but it offers some clarity.
For some artists who hoped to push the Copyright Office to adapt laws, the guidelines may disappoint, leaving many questions about a world of possible creative AI uses unanswered. But while a case-by-case approach may leave some artists unsure about which parts of their works are copyrightable, seemingly common cases are being resolved more readily. According to the Copyright Office, after each decision, it gets easier to register AI works that meet similar standards for copyrightability. Perhaps over time, artists will grow more secure in how they use AI and whether it will impact their exclusive rights to distribute works.
That's likely cold comfort for the artist advocating for prompting alone to constitute authorship. One AI artist told Ars in October that being denied a copyright has meant suffering being mocked and watching his award-winning work freely used anywhere online without his permission and without payment. But in the end, the Copyright Office was apparently more sympathetic to other commenters who warned that humanity's progress in the arts could be hampered if a flood of easily generated, copyrightable AI works drowned too many humans out of the market...
Although the Copyright Office suggested that this week's report might be the most highly anticipated, Jernite said that Hugging Face is eager to see the next report, which officials said would focus on "the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.""
MATT O’BRIEN, AP; AI-assisted works can get copyright with enough human creativity, says US copyright office
"Artists can copyright works they made with the help of artificial intelligence, according to a new report by the U.S. Copyright Office that could further clear the way for the use of AI tools in Hollywood, the music industry and other creative fields.
The nation’s copyright office, which sits in the Library of Congress and is not part of the executive branch, receives about half a million copyright applications per year covering millions of individual works. It has increasingly been asked to register works that are AI-generated.
And while many of those decisions are made on a case-by-case basis, the report issued Wednesday clarifies the office’s approach as one based on what the top U.S. copyright official describes as the “centrality of human creativity” in authoring a work that warrants copyright protections."
U.S. Copyright Office, Issue No. 1060; Copyright Office Releases Part 2 of Artificial Intelligence Report
"Today, the U.S. Copyright Office is releasing Part 2 of its Report on the legal and policy issues related to copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). This Part of the Report addresses the copyrightability of outputs created using generative AI. The Office affirms that existing principles of copyright law are flexible enough to apply to this new technology, as they have applied to technological innovations in the past. It concludes that the outputs of generative AI can be protected by copyright only where a human author has determined sufficient expressive elements. This can include situations where a human-authored work is perceptible in an AI output, or a human makes creative arrangements or modifications of the output, but not the mere provision of prompts. The Office confirms that the use of AI to assist in the process of creation or the inclusion of AI-generated material in a larger human-generated work does not bar copyrightability. It also finds that the case has not been made for changes to existing law to provide additional protection for AI-generated outputs.
“After considering the extensive public comments and the current state of technological development, our conclusions turn on the centrality of human creativity to copyright,” said Shira Perlmutter, Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office. “Where that creativity is expressed through the use of AI systems, it continues to enjoy protection. Extending protection to material whose expressive elements are determined by a machine, however, would undermine rather than further the constitutional goals of copyright.”
In early 2023, the Copyright Office announced a broad initiative to explore the intersection of copyright and AI. Since then, the Office has issued registration guidance for works incorporating AI-generated content, hosted public listening sessions and webinars, met with experts and stakeholders, published a notice of inquiry seeking input from the public, and reviewed more than 10,000 responsive comments, which served to inform these conclusions.
The Report is being released in three Parts. Part 1 was published on July 31, 2024, and recommended federal legislation to respond to the unauthorized distribution of digital replicas that realistically but falsely depict an individual. The final, forthcoming Part 3 will address the legal implications of training AI models on copyrighted works, including licensing considerations and the allocation of any potential liability.
As announced last year, the Office also plans to supplement its March 2023 registration guidance and update the relevant sections of the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices.
For more information about the Copyright Office’s AI Initiative, please visit the website."
KATHARINE TRENDACOSTA, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); It's Copyright Week 2025: Join Us in the Fight for Better Copyright Law and Policy
"We're taking part in Copyright Week, a series of actions and discussions supporting key principles that should guide copyright policy. Every day this week, various groups are taking on different elements of copyright law and policy, and addressing what's at stake, and what we need to do to make sure that copyright promotes creativity and innovation
We continue to fight for a version of copyright that does what it is supposed to. And so, every year, EFF and a number of diverse organizations participate in Copyright Week. Each year, we pick five copyright issues to highlight and advocate a set of principles of copyright law. This year’s issues are:
Every day this week, we’ll be sharing links to blog posts on these topics at https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek."
, Forbes; Copyright Under Siege: How Big Tech Uses AI And China To Exploit Creators
"Generative AI is reshaping creativity in ways that highlight a troubling paradox: while touted as a force for innovation, it increasingly relies on exploiting copyrighted materials, songs, books, and artworks, without consent or compensation. This transformation underscores the growing conflict between technological progress and the preservation of artistic integrity. At the heart of the issue lies a troubling paradox: while companies like OpenAI and Google promote AI as a force for innovation, their reliance on scraping copyrighted materials, songs, books, and artworks, undermines the very creativity they claim to enhance. This exploitation is often disguised as progress or justified as necessary for global competitiveness, particularly in the AI race against China. However, these claims mask a deeper reality: the consolidation of power by Big Tech at the expense of creators. As the balance of influence shifts, those who drive culture and innovation are increasingly marginalized, raising urgent questions about the future of intellectual property and creative industries."
BILL DONAHUE , Billboard; Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Aims to Axe Copyright Lawsuit Over Van Halen Guitar Photo
"The Rock Hall is just the latest company to face such a lawsuit from Zlozower, who also snapped images of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson and Bruce Springsteen over a decades-long career. Since 2016, court records show he’s filed nearly 60 copyright cases against a range of defendants over images of Elvis Costello, Guns N’ Roses, Mötley Crüe and more...
In their motion to dismiss the case, the Rock Hall’s attorneys say the museum made a “transformative use” of Zlozower’s original image — a key question when courts decide fair use. They say the Hall used it not simply as an image of the band, but “to contextualize Eddie Van Halen’s instruments on display in the museum as historical artifacts.”
“RRHOF incorporated a portion of plaintiff’s photograph displayed next to the exhibition object, as one piece of source material to document and represent the use of the guitar,” the museum’s lawyers write. “This proximal association between source material and exhibition object helps visitors connect information and delve more deeply into the exhibition objects.”
In making that argument, the Hall’s attorneys had a handy piece of legal precedent to cite: A 2021 ruling by a federal appeals court tossed out a copyright lawsuit against New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art over the use of another image of Van Halen in a different exhibit on the same famous set of guitars."
Harjaap Ahluwalia | Osgoode Hall Law School, CA, Jurist.org; News organizations sue OpenAI over copyright infringement claims
"The case centers on allegations that OpenAI unlawfully utilized copyrighted content from various publishers, including The New York Times, to train its generative AI models and the hearing could determine whether OpenAI will face trial.
The plaintiffs claim that ChatGPT’s ability to generate human-like responses stems from the unauthorized use of their work without permission or compensation to develop their large language models (LLMs). OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft argue that its use of data is protected under the fair use doctrine, which allows limited use of copyrighted material without permission for purposes such as commentary, criticism or education.
Additionally, OpenAI’s legal team asserts that The New York Times has not demonstrated actual harm resulting from their practices and that its use of the copyrighted material is transformative as it does not replicate the content verbatim. On the other hand, the plaintiffs are arguing copyright infringement because OpenAI removed identifiable information such as author bylines and publication details when using the content. They also contend that the LLMs absorb and reproduce expressions from the training data without genuine understanding."
Bobby Allyn, NPR; 'The New York Times' takes OpenAI to court. ChatGPT's future could be on the line
"A group of news organizations, led by The New York Times, took ChatGPT maker OpenAI to federal court on Tuesday in a hearing that could determine whether the tech company has to face the publishers in a high-profile copyright infringement trial.
Three publishers' lawsuits against OpenAI and its financial backer Microsoft have been merged into one case. Leading each of the three combined cases are the Times, The New York Daily News and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Other publishers, like the Associated Press, News Corp. and Vox Media, have reached content-sharing deals with OpenAI, but the three litigants in this case are taking the opposite path: going on the offensive."
"California attorney Mark Lemley dropped
"Copyright was a big thing even back in 1922 when Nosferatu came out."
Thomas Claburn , The Register;
"The errant copyright takedown of a popular video explaining Bitcoin, from Grant Sanderson's smash-hit YouTube channel 3Blue1Brown, has been reversed, with human error blamed.
The brand protection company responsible for the unwarranted takedown, ChainPatrol.io, also acknowledged that the legal demand was a mistake, and has been in communication with Sanderson about its efforts to return the video to YouTube. Sanderson – who has 6.8 million subscribers on YouTube, and whose in-depth videos mainly on mathematics and science have been viewed more than 600 million times – raised the alarm in a social media post on Monday.
He said he had just learned that YouTube had removed a 2017-era video he had made and applied a copyright strike – three of which will get an account terminated – despite the fact that he had only used his own content in his video."
