Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label creativity. Show all posts

Saturday, August 23, 2025

Watering down Australia’s AI copyright laws would sacrifice writers’ livelihoods to ‘brogrammers’; The Guardian, August 11, 2025

 Tracey Spicer, The Guardian; Watering down Australia’s AI copyright laws would sacrifice writers’ livelihoods to ‘brogrammers’

"My latest book, which is about artificial intelligence discriminating against people from marginalised communities, was composed on an Apple Mac.

Whatever the form of recording the first rough draft of history, one thing remains the same: they are very human stories – stories that change the way we think about the world.

A society is the sum of the stories it tells. When stories, poems or books are “scraped”, what does this really mean?

The definition of scraping is to “drag or pull a hard or sharp implement across (a surface or object) so as to remove dirt or other matter”.

A long way from Brisbane or Bangladesh, in the rarefied climes of Silicon Valley, scrapers are removing our stories as if they are dirt.

These stories are fed into the machines of the great god: generative AI. But the outputs – their creations – are flatter, less human, more homogenised. ChatGPT tells tales set in metropolitan areas in the global north; of young, cishet men and people living without disability.

We lose the stories of lesser-known characters in remote parts of the world, eroding our understanding of the messy experience of being human.

Where will we find the stories of 64-year-old John from Traralgon, who died from asbestosis? Or seven-year-old Raha from Jaipur, whose future is a “choice” between marriage at the age of 12 and sexual exploitation?

OpenAI’s creations are not the “machines of loving grace” envisioned in the 1967 poem by Richard Brautigan, where he dreams of a “cybernetic meadow”.

Scraping is a venal money grab by oligarchs who are – incidentally – scrambling to protect their own intellectual property during an AI arms race.

The code behind ChatGPT is protected by copyright, which is considered to be a literary work. (I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.)

Meta has already stolen the work of thousands of Australian writers.

Now, our own Productivity Commission is considering weakening our Copyright Act to include an exemption for text and data mining, which may well put us out of business.

In its response, The Australia Institute uses the analogy of a car: “Imagine grabbing the keys for a rental car and just driving around for a while without paying to hire it or filling in any paperwork. Then imagine that instead of being prosecuted for breaking the law, the government changed the law to make driving around in a rental car legal.”

It’s more like taking a piece out of someone’s soul, chucking it into a machine and making it into something entirely different. Ugly. Inhuman.

The commission’s report seems to be an absurdist text. The argument for watering down copyright is that it will lead to more innovation. But the explicit purpose of the Copyright Act is to protect innovation, in the form of creative endeavour.

Our work is being devalued, dismissed and destroyed; our livelihoods demolished.

In this age of techno-capitalism, it appears the only worthwhile innovation is being built by the “brogrammers”.

US companies are pinching Australian content, using it to train their models, then selling it back to us. It’s an extractive industry: neocolonialism, writ large."

Sunday, August 17, 2025

Copyright Is Dead. But Is It?; Forbes, August 12, 2025

Paulo Carvão , Forbes; Copyright Is Dead. But Is It?

"This is a clash between two visions of the future. One embraces a world where technology moves faster than the law, forcing us to abandon old notions of ownership in favor of new, more resilient business models. The other sees a future where copyright is not an outdated legal concept but a vital economic engine that can be adapted and monetized in the age of AI. The middle ground points us to a path forward that adapts current laws to fit AI’s real-world usage.

The future of copyright is unlikely to be a simple binary decision. Instead, it will be a negotiation between creators, tech companies, lawyers, and regulators. What’s clear is that the conversation is no longer confined to legal journals but has entered the mainstream, sparking a necessary dialogue about the value of creativity, the nature of intelligence, and the future of the digital economy."

Saturday, August 16, 2025

Margaret Boden, Philosopher of Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88; The New York Times, August 14, 2025

 , The New York Times; Margaret Boden, Philosopher of Artificial Intelligence, Dies at 88

"As a philosopher of AI, Professor Boden was often asked if she thought that robots would, or could, take over society.

“The truth is that they certainly won’t want to,” she wrote in Aeon magazine in 2018.

Why? Because robots, unlike humans, don’t care.

“A computer’s ‘goals,’” she wrote, “are empty of feeling.”"

Monday, August 11, 2025

Invention-Con 2025: Empowering American ingenuity and innovation; United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), September 9-10, 2025

United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) ; Invention-Con 2025: Empowering American ingenuity and innovation

"Do you want to grow your intellectual property (IP) knowledge and gain access to IP and business experts, accomplished innovators, and inspiring entrepreneurs? Join us for the USPTO's free flagship conference for inventors, makers, and entrepreneurs. Don’t miss Invention-Con 2025, coming to you virtually September 9-10 from 1:00 – 3:30 p.m. ET daily. Tailored for the independent inventor and entrepreneur community, our marquee event brings inspiration and IP experts directly to you.

  • Learn from accomplished innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs, and business owners how to use IP to achieve success.

  • Discover resources available to assist at every stage of your journey.

  • Connect with IP and business experts who can help you develop a strategy for your innovation, from idea to market."

Saturday, August 9, 2025

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’; New York Post, August 6, 2025

Ariel Zilber, New York Post ; News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’

"The media executive said the voracious appetite of the AI firms to train their bots on proprietary content without paying for it risks eroding America’s edge over rival nations.

“Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts but wit,” he said.

“To undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity.”"

Saturday, July 5, 2025

Two Courts Rule On Generative AI and Fair Use — One Gets It Right; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), June 26, 2025

TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Two Courts Rule On Generative AI and Fair Use — One Gets It Right

 "Gen-AI is spurring the kind of tech panics we’ve seen before; then, as now, thoughtful fair use opinions helped ensure that copyright law served innovation and creativity. Gen-AI does raise a host of other serious concerns about fair labor practices and misinformation, but copyright wasn’t designed to address those problems. Trying to force copyright law to play those roles only hurts important and legal uses of this technology.

In keeping with that tradition, courts deciding fair use in other AI copyright cases should look to Bartz, not Kadrey."

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

AI copyright anxiety will hold back creativity; MIT Technology Review, June 17, 2025

 

, MIT Technology Review; AI copyright anxiety will hold back creativity

"Who, exactly, owns the outputs of a generative model? The user who crafted the prompt? The developer who built the model? The artists whose works were ingested to train it? Will the social forces that shape artistic standing—critics, curators, tastemakers—still hold sway? Or will a new, AI-era hierarchy emerge? If every artist has always borrowed from others, is AI’s generative recombination really so different? And in such a litigious culture, how long can copyright law hold its current form? The US Copyright Office has begun to tackle the thorny issues of ownership and says that generative outputs can be copyrighted if they are sufficiently human-authored. But it is playing catch-up in a rapidly evolving field.

Different industries are responding in different ways...

I don’t consider this essay to be great art. But I should be transparent: I relied extensively on ChatGPT while drafting it...

Many people today remain uneasy about using these tools. They worry it’s cheating, or feel embarrassed to admit that they’ve sought such help...

I recognize the counterargument, notably put forward by Nicholas Thompson, CEO of the Atlantic: that content produced with AI assistance should not be eligible for copyright protection, because it blurs the boundaries of authorship. I understand the instinct. AI recombines vast corpora of preexisting work, and the results can feel derivative or machine-like.

But when I reflect on the history of creativity—van Gogh reworking Eisen, Dalí channeling Bruegel, Sheeran defending common musical DNA—I’m reminded that recombination has always been central to creation. The economist Joseph Schumpeter famously wrote that innovation is less about invention than “the novel reassembly of existing ideas.” If we tried to trace and assign ownership to every prior influence, we’d grind creativity to a halt." 

Monday, June 2, 2025

The AI copyright standoff continues - with no solution in sight; BBC, June 2, 2025

Zoe Kleinman, BBC ; The AI copyright standoff continues - with no solution in sight

"The fierce battle over artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright - which pits the government against some of the biggest names in the creative industry - returns to the House of Lords on Monday with little sign of a solution in sight.

A huge row has kicked off between ministers and peers who back the artists, and shows no sign of abating. 

It might be about AI but at its heart are very human issues: jobs and creativity.

It's highly unusual that neither side has backed down by now or shown any sign of compromise; in fact if anything support for those opposing the government is growing rather than tailing off."

Monday, April 21, 2025

2025 International IP Index; U.S. Chamber of Commerce, April 15, 2025

 U.S. Chamber of Commerce; 2025 International IP Index

"The U.S. Chamber’s International IP Index (IP Index) creates a roadmap for economies seeking to strengthen the ecosystem for innovation and creativity through more effective intellectual property (IP) standards. 

The 13th IP Index evaluates intellectual property systems across the world's top 55 economies using 53 unique criteria. The data shows economies how to improve IP-driven innovation and creativity and reveals trends in global IP protection.  

The IP Index also serves as a guide to world leaders on proven methods to champion innovation and creativity at home. With this data, they can see what's working, what's not, and what changes are needed to ensure a brighter future."

Monday, March 24, 2025

Should AI be treated the same way as people are when it comes to copyright law? ; The Hill, March 24, 2025

 NICHOLAS CREEL, The Hill ; Should AI be treated the same way as people are when it comes to copyright law? 

"The New York Times’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft highlights an uncomfortable contradiction in how we view creativity and learning. While the Times accuses these companies of copyright infringement for training AI on their content, this ignores a fundamental truth: AI systems learn exactly as humans do, by absorbing, synthesizing and transforming existing knowledge into something new."

Tuesday, February 4, 2025

The US Copyright Office's new ruling on AI art is here - and it could change everything; ZDNet, February 3, 2025

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)."

Saturday, January 25, 2025

Paul McCartney: Don't let AI rip off artists; BBC, January 25, 2025

Laura Kuenssberg, BBC; Paul McCartney: Don't let AI rip off artists

"Sir Paul McCartney has told the BBC proposed changes to copyright law could allow "rip off" technology that might make it impossible for musicians and artists to make a living.

The government is considering an overhaul of the law that would allow AI developers to use creators' content on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders opt out.

In a rare interview for Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Sir Paul said "when we were kids in Liverpool, we found a job that we loved, but it also paid the bills", warning the proposals could remove the incentive for writers and artists and result in a "loss of creativity". 

The government said it aimed to deliver legal certainty through a copyright regime that provided creators with "real control" and transparency."

Thursday, December 26, 2024

How Hallucinatory A.I. Helps Science Dream Up Big Breakthroughs; The New York Times, December 23, 2024

, The New York Times; How Hallucinatory A.I. Helps Science Dream Up Big Breakthroughs

"In the universe of science, however, innovators are finding that A.I. hallucinations can be remarkably useful. The smart machines, it turns out, are dreaming up riots of unrealities that help scientists track cancer, design drugs, invent medical devices, uncover weather phenomena and even win the Nobel Prize.

“The public thinks it’s all bad,” said Amy McGovern, a computer scientist who directs a federal A.I. institute. “But it’s actually giving scientists new ideas. It’s giving them the chance to explore ideas they might not have thought about otherwise.”

The public image of science is coolly analytic. Less visibly, the early stages of discovery can teem with hunches and wild guesswork. “Anything goes” is how Paul Feyerabend, a philosopher of science, once characterized the free-for-all.

Now, A.I. hallucinations are reinvigorating the creative side of science. They speed the process by which scientists and inventors dream up new ideas and test them to see if reality concurs. It’s the scientific method — only supercharged. What once took years can now be done in days, hours and minutes. In some cases, the accelerated cycles of inquiry help scientists open new frontiers."

Popeye, Tintin and more will enter the public domain in the new year; NPR, December 26, 2024

 , NPR; Popeye, Tintin and more will enter the public domain in the new year

"The main thing they have in common is their age — under U.S. copyright law, their terms all expire after 95 years. All of the works entering the public domain next year are from 1929, except for sound recordings, which (because they are covered by a different law) come from 1924.

"Copyright's awesome … but the fact that rights eventually expire, that's a good thing, too, because that's the wellspring for creativity," says Jennifer Jenkins, the director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, which spends months poring over records to compile the most famous examples.

Once in the public domain, these works become fodder for remakes, spinoffs and other adaptations."

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

The Heart of the Matter: Copyright, AI Training, and LLMs; SSRN, November 1, 2024

Daniel J. GervaisVanderbilt University - Law School

Noam ShemtovQueen Mary University of London, Centre for Commercial Law Studies

Haralambos MarmanisCopyright Clearance Center

Catherine Zaller RowlandCopyright Clearance Center 

SSRN; The Heart of the Matter: Copyright, AI Training, and LLMs



"Abstract

This article explores the intricate intersection of copyright law and large language models (LLMs), a cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology that has rapidly gained prominence. The authors provide a comprehensive analysis of the copyright implications arising from the training, fine-tuning, and use of LLMs, which often involve the ingestion of vast amounts of copyrighted material. The paper begins by elucidating the technical aspects of LLMs, including tokenization, word embeddings, and the various stages of LLM development. This technical foundation is crucial for understanding the subsequent legal analysis. The authors then delve into the copyright law aspects, examining potential infringement issues related to both inputs and outputs of LLMs. A comparative legal analysis is presented, focusing on the United States, European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland. The article scrutinizes relevant copyright exceptions and limitations in these jurisdictions, including fair use in the US and text and data mining exceptions in the EU. The authors highlight the uncertainties and challenges in applying these legal concepts to LLMs, particularly in light of recent court decisions and legislative developments. The paper also addresses the potential impact of the EU's AI Act on copyright considerations, including its extraterritorial effects. Furthermore, it explores the concept of "making available" in the context of LLMs and its implications for copyright infringement. Recognizing the legal uncertainties and the need for a balanced approach that fosters both innovation and copyright protection, the authors propose licensing as a key solution. They advocate for a combination of direct and collective licensing models to provide a practical framework for the responsible use of copyrighted materials in AI systems.

This article offers valuable insights for legal scholars, policymakers, and industry professionals grappling with the copyright challenges posed by LLMs. It contributes to the ongoing dialogue on adapting copyright law to technological advancements while maintaining its fundamental purpose of incentivizing creativity and innovation."

Sunday, September 29, 2024

US Trademark Office cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' marks; Reuters, September 26, 2024

Blake Brittain , Reuters; US Trademark Office cancels Marvel, DC's 'Super Hero' marks

"A U.S. Trademark Office tribunal has canceled a set of "Super Hero" trademarks jointly owned by comic giants Marvel and DC at the request of a London-based comic book artist, according to a Thursday order.

The USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board ruled for S.J. Richold's Superbabies Ltd after Disney's Marvel and Warner Bros' DC did not file an answer to Superbabies' request to invalidate the marks.

Spokespeople and attorneys for Marvel and DC did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Superbabies attorney Adam Adler of Reichman Jorgensen Lehman & Feldberg said in a statement that the ruling was "not just a win for our client but a victory for creativity and innovation."

"By establishing SUPER HEROES' place in the public domain, we safeguard it as a symbol of heroism available to all storytellers," Adler said."

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Public domain, where there is life after copyright; CBS News, Sunday Morning, April 14, 2024

Lee Cowan , CBS News, Sunday Morning; Public domain, where there is life after copyright

"Jenkins said, "The public domain doesn't represent the death of copyright. It's just the second part of copyright's life cycle."

The concept of putting an expiration date on intellectual property was something the founding fathers actually put in the U.S. Constitution, "...to promote the progress of science and the useful arts." They left it to Congress, however, to decide just how long copyright terms should last...

Duke University's Jennifer Jenkins said, "Copyright gives rights to creators and their descendants that provide incentives to create. But the public domain really is the soil for future creativity."

There are surely more copyright clashes ahead. Characters like Bugs Bunny, Superman and Batman will all find themselves out of copyright protection soon enough.

Even Luke Skywalker will eventually find himself in the public domain, too, sometime around 2073. That sure seems like a galaxy far, far way."

Monday, February 12, 2024

On Copyright, Creativity, and Compensation; Reason, February 12, 2024

, Reason; On Copyright, Creativity, and Compensation

"Some of you may have seen the article by David Segal in the Sunday NY Times several weeks ago [available here] about a rather sordid copyright fracas in which I have been embroiled over the past few months...

What to make of all this? I am not oblivious to the irony of being confronted with this problem after having spent 30 years or so, as a lawyer and law professor, reflecting on and writing about the many mysteries of copyright policy and copyright law in the Internet Age.

Here are a few things that strike me as interesting (and possibly important) in this episode."

Thursday, January 11, 2024

Stephen Thaler’s Quest to Get His ‘Autonomous’ AI Legally Recognized Could Upend Copyright Law Forever; Art News, January 8, 2024

 Shanti Escalante-De Mattei, Art News; Stephen Thaler’s Quest to Get His  ‘Autonomous’ AI Legally Recognized Could Upend Copyright Law Forever

"Abbott and Thaler’s push for copyright brings up a very basic question for artists today: how do we locate agency and creativity when we make things with machines? When is it our doing, and when is it “theirs”? This question follows the arc of history as humans design increasingly complex tools that work independently of us, even if we designed them and set them into motion. Debates have raged in public forums and in lawsuits regarding to what extent a model like Midjourney can produce genuinely novel images or whether it is just randomly stitching together disparate pixels based on its training data to generate synthetic quasi-originality. But for those who work in machine learning, this process isn’t all that different from how humans work."

Thursday, June 29, 2023

AI Can Actually Help Protect Creativity and Copyrights: Guest Post by Reservoir Music CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi; Variety, June 28, 2023

Golnar Khosrowshahi, Variety ; AI Can Actually Help Protect Creativity and Copyrights: Guest Post by Reservoir Music CEO Golnar Khosrowshahi

"Used correctly, AI can actually help us preserve and protect copyright — versus the present fear of usurping it. Through audio fingerprinting, AI tools that verify authorship in real time will help reduce the unnecessary litigation that can be based on subjective interpretations or human error. AI will also equip both owners and distributors of content (i.e. streaming services) with significant changes in how we classify and catalog music (e.g., the micro categories that we can use to further define characteristics and attributes of songs). Not only can we then better understand the music, but we can also be more efficient at micro licensing, delving into why listeners love what they love, both in the moment in the context of a trend, and over time when it comes to standards and classics...

In any event, we first need to make sure that the ingestion of copyrights that enable AI is adequately policed and paid for, which is where a lot of important discussion and focus is today.  Advocating for rights holders and copyright protection is a routine part of our business, and regardless of whether an infringer is human or artificial doesn’t change our steadfast mission in upholding creators’ rights...

I have faith that the creators who have built this industry will continue to be the human driving force behind the art and connections we experience. I have faith the tools will help propel those creators and rights holders to new heights. I have faith in the protection of copyright through policy and legislation, and I have faith in the industry’s historic precedence of uncharted progress and success achieved in the face of technologic disruption.

So to those who fear the AI invasion, I say: keep calm, meet it head on and create something totally new, as only we humans can."