Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features; The Guardian, June 27, 2025

Miranda Bryant  , The Guardian; Denmark to tackle deepfakes by giving people copyright to their own features

"The Danish government is to clamp down on the creation and dissemination of AI-generated deepfakes by changing copyright law to ensure that everybody has the right to their own body, facial features and voice.

The Danish government said on Thursday it would strengthen protection against digital imitations of people’s identities with what it believes to be the first law of its kind in Europe."

Judge dismisses authors’ copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training; AP, June 25, 2025

 MATT O’BRIEN AND BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP; Judge dismisses authors’ copyright lawsuit against Meta over AI training

"Although Meta prevailed in its request to dismiss the case, it could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory. In his 40-page ruling, Chhabria repeatedly indicated reasons to believe that Meta and other AI companies have turned into serial copyright infringers as they train their technology on books and other works created by humans, and seemed to be inviting other authors to bring cases to his court presented in a manner that would allow them to proceed to trial.

The judge scoffed at arguments that requiring AI companies to adhere to decades-old copyright laws would slow down advances in a crucial technology at a pivotal time. “These products are expected to generate billions, even trillions of dollars for the companies that are developing them. If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders for it.”

Ball State University Libraries Launches Research Guide on Ethical AI Use; Ball State University, June 24, 2025

 Ball State University; Ball State University Libraries Launches Research Guide on Ethical AI Use

"In an era in which artificial intelligence tools are rapidly reshaping how we access and share information, Ball State University Libraries has introduced a new research guide to help students, faculty, staff, and community members use AI more thoughtfully and effectively.

The interactive guide, now available at bsu.libguides.com, equips users with foundational skills to assess the credibility, accuracy, and ethical implications of generative AI tools like ChatGPT and image generators. Through five short videos and practical examples, the guide teaches users to identify potential misinformation, recognize AI-generated bias, and apply AI output in meaningful and responsible ways.

Key learning outcomes include:"

Anthropic’s AI copyright ‘win’ is more complicated than it looks; Fast Company, June 24, 2025

CHRIS STOKEL-WALKER, Fast Company;Anthropic’s AI copyright ‘win’ is more complicated than it looks

"And that’s the catch: This wasn’t an unvarnished win for Anthropic. Like other tech companies, Anthropic allegedly sourced training materials from piracy sites for ease—a fact that clearly troubled the court. “This order doubts that any accused infringer could ever meet its burden of explaining why downloading source copies from pirate sites that it could have purchased or otherwise accessed lawfully was itself reasonably necessary to any subsequent fair use,” Alsup wrote, referring to Anthropic’s alleged pirating of more than 7 million books.

That alone could carry billions in liability, with statutory damages starting at $750 per book—a trial on that issue is still to come.

So while tech companies may still claim victory (with some justification, given the fair use precedent), the same ruling also implies that companies will need to pay substantial sums to legally obtain training materials. OpenAI, for its part, has in the past argued that licensing all the copyrighted material needed to train its models would be practically impossible.

Joanna Bryson, a professor of AI ethics at the Hertie School in Berlin, says the ruling is “absolutely not” a blanket win for tech companies. “First of all, it’s not the Supreme Court. Secondly, it’s only one jurisdiction: The U.S.,” she says. “I think they don’t entirely have purchase over this thing about whether or not it was transformative in the sense of changing Claude’s output.”"

The copyright war between the AI industry and creatives; Financial Times, June 23, 2025

 MARTIN WOLF, Financial Times ; The copyright war between the AI industry and creatives

"One is that the government itself estimates that “creative industries generated £126bn in gross value added to the economy [5 per cent of GDP] and employed 2.4 million people in 2022”. It is at the very least an open question whether the value added of the AI industry will ever be of a comparable scale in this country. Another is that the creative industries represent much of the best of what the UK and indeed humanity does. The idea of handing over its output for free is abhorrent...

Interestingly, for much of the 19th century, the US did not recognise international copyright at all in its domestic law. Anthony Trollope himself complained fiercely about the theft of the copyright over his books."

Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit; Reuters, June 24, 2025

Blake Brittain, Reuters; Anthropic wins key US ruling on AI training in authors' copyright lawsuit

 "A federal judge in San Francisco ruled late on Monday that Anthropic's use of books without permission to train its artificial intelligence system was legal under U.S. copyright law.

Siding with tech companies on a pivotal question for the AI industry, U.S. District Judge William Alsup said Anthropic made "fair use" of books by writers Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson to train its Claude large language model.

Alsup also said, however, that Anthropic's copying and storage of more than 7 million pirated books in a "central library" infringed the authors' copyrights and was not fair use. The judge has ordered a trial in December to determine how much Anthropic owes for the infringement."

Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book; Ars Technica, June 20, 2025

TIMOTHY B. LEE  , Ars Techcnica; Study: Meta AI model can reproduce almost half of Harry Potter book

"In recent years, numerous plaintiffs—including publishers of books, newspapers, computer code, and photographs—have sued AI companies for training models using copyrighted material. A key question in all of these lawsuits has been how easily AI models produce verbatim excerpts from the plaintiffs’ copyrighted content.

For example, in its December 2023 lawsuit against OpenAI, The New York Times Company produced dozens of examples where GPT-4 exactly reproduced significant passages from Times stories. In its response, OpenAI described this as a “fringe behavior” and a “problem that researchers at OpenAI and elsewhere work hard to address.”

But is it actually a fringe behavior? And have leading AI companies addressed it? New research—focusing on books rather than newspaper articles and on different companies—provides surprising insights into this question. Some of the findings should bolster plaintiffs’ arguments, while others may be more helpful to defendants.

The paper was published last month by a team of computer scientists and legal scholars from Stanford, Cornell, and West Virginia University. They studied whether five popular open-weight models—three from Meta and one each from Microsoft and EleutherAI—were able to reproduce text from Books3, a collection of books that is widely used to train LLMs. Many of the books are still under copyright."

Copyright Cases Should Not Threaten Chatbot Users’ Privacy; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), June 23, 2025

TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Copyright Cases Should Not Threaten Chatbot Users’ Privacy

"Like users of all technologies, ChatGPT users deserve the right to delete their personal data. Nineteen U.S. States, the European Union, and a host of other countries already protect users’ right to delete. For years, OpenAI gave users the option to delete their conversations with ChatGPT, rather than let their personal queries linger on corporate servers. Now, they can’t. A badly misguided court order in a copyright lawsuit requires OpenAI to store all consumer ChatGPT conversations indefinitely—even if a user tries to delete them. This sweeping order far outstrips the needs of the case and sets a dangerous precedent by disregarding millions of users’ privacy rights.

The privacy harms here are significant. ChatGPT’s 300+ million users submit over 1 billion messages to its chatbots per day, often for personal purposes. Virtually any personal use of a chatbot—anything from planning family vacations and daily habits to creating social media posts and fantasy worlds for Dungeons and Dragons games—reveal personal details that, in aggregate, create a comprehensive portrait of a person’s entire life. Other uses risk revealing people’s most sensitive information. For example, tens of millions of Americans use ChatGPT to obtain medical and financial information. Notwithstanding other risks of these uses, people still deserve privacy rights like the right to delete their data. Eliminating protections for user-deleted data risks chilling beneficial uses by individuals who want to protect their privacy."

Pope: Intelligence is seeking life's true meaning, not having reams of data; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, June 20, 2025

 Carol Glatz , United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Pope: Intelligence is seeking life's true meaning, not having reams of data

"Access to vast amounts of data and information is not the same thing as having intelligence, which is uniquely human and requires being open to truth, goodness and the real meaning of life, Pope Leo XIV told AI experts and executives.

"Authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life than with the availability of data," he said in a written message released by the Vatican June 20.

"Acknowledging and respecting what is uniquely characteristic of the human person is essential to the discussion of any adequate ethical framework for the governance of AI," he wrote.

The message, written in English, was addressed to people attending the second annual Rome conference on AI, Ethics and the Future of Corporate Governance being held in Rome and at the Vatican June 19-20.

The conference "brings together executives from leading AI companies as well as large enterprises using AI with policymakers, scholars, ethicists and lawyers to consider in a holistic way the challenges facing the ethics and governance of AI, both for companies developing this revolutionary technology as well as the enterprises incorporating AI into their businesses," according to the event's website."

The Pope has a message for AI executives; Quartz, June 20, 2025

 Michael Barclay, Quartz; The Pope has a message for AI executives

Pope Leo wants AI to be regulated ethically, while the U.S. is poised to bar any state-level regulations for a decade

"At the Second Annual Rome Conference on Artificial Intelligence on Friday, Pope Leo talked about where AI is headed.

The event was attended by Vatican officials, American academics, and Silicon Valley executives from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and more. The new pope urged serious reflection on “the inherently ethical dimension of AI, as well as its responsible governance...

Pope Leo said AI’s benefits and risks must be evaluated using a “superior ethical criterion,” adding that it “challenges all of us to reflect more deeply on the true nature and uniqueness of our shared human dignity.” He added that “access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence.”"

Pope Leo calls for an ethical AI framework in a message to tech execs gathering at the Vatican; CNN, June 20, 2025

 Clare Duffy and Christopher Lamb, CNN ; Pope Leo calls for an ethical AI framework in a message to tech execs gathering at the Vatican

"Pope Leo XIV says tech companies developing artificial intelligence should abide by an “ethical criterion” that respects human dignity.

AI must take “into account the well-being of the human person not only materially, but also intellectually and spiritually,” the pope said in a message sent Friday to a gathering on AI attended by Vatican officials and Silicon Valley executives.

“No generation has ever had such quick access to the amount of information now available through AI,” he said. But “access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence.”

He also expressed concern about AI’s impact on children’s “intellectual and neurological development,” writing that “society’s well-being depends upon their being given the ability to develop their God-given gifts and capabilities.”

That statement from the Pope came on the second of a two-day meeting for tech leaders in Rome to discuss the societal and ethical implications of artificial intelligence. The second annual Rome Conference on AI was attended by representatives from AI leaders including Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, IBM, Meta and Palantir along with academics from Harvard and Stanford and representatives of the Holy See.

The event comes at a somewhat fraught moment for AI, with the rapidly advancing technology promising to improve worker productivity, accelerate research and eradicate disease, but also threatening to take human jobs, produce misinformation, worsen the climate crisis and create even more powerful weapons and surveillance capabilities. Some tech leaders have pushed back against regulationsintended to ensure that AI is used responsibly, which they say could hinder innovation and global competition.

“In some cases, AI has been used in positive and indeed noble ways to promote greater equality, but there is likewise the possibility of its misuse for selfish gain at the expense of others, or worse, to foment conflict and aggression,” Leo said in his Friday statement."

How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America; Literary Hub, June 17, 2025

Anthony Aycock, Literary Hub; How a Single Court Case Could Determine the Future of Book Banning in America

"Bottom line: in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi–the states covered by the Fifth Circuit–libraries are free to remove books for any reason. 

The plaintiffs now face a choice: accept the Fifth Circuit’s ruling or appeal to the Supreme Court. If there is an appeal, the court may not accept it. Over 7,000 cases are appealed to the high court each year, and it hears only 100-150–less than two percent. Yet I think Little v. Llano County has a good chance of making the docket. 

For one thing, the Fifth Circuit’s en banc reversal of its own panel’s ruling suggests the need for the high court to step in. Second, this Supreme Court has been eager to revisit earlier precedents. In the last few years, it has curtailed abortion protections, ended Chevron deference, and canceled affirmative action in college admissions–all long-standing, seemingly bedrock principles. Why not target Pico, especially since it wasn’t a decisive ruling to begin with?

Third, unlike most book ban cases, Little pertains not to a school library but a public one. Public libraries, according to UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, are not like school libraries. “I tentatively think a public school,” Volokh wrote, “is entitled to decide which viewpoints to promote through its own library,” whereas public libraries “are much more about giving more options to readers, rather than about teaching particular skills and attitudes to students.” 

Public libraries also serve more people–an entire county rather than a school system. Remember Judge Duncan’s belief that anyone who wants a certain book “can buy it or borrow it from somewhere else”? Llano County is small and rural, and many of its residents may not have the purchase option. For them, a book being unavailable in a library is a de facto ban. The pro-library organization EveryLibrary agrees, writing that the Fifth Circuit’s opinion “reveals an indifference to the lived reality of millions of Americans for whom public libraries are their only or primary means of access to books.” 

Here’s hoping that, if Little or any other book ban case ends up before this Supreme Court, those nine justices will consider the issue thoughtfully, creatively, and most important, impartially."

Bill Clinton says he wondered if Trump administration might try to ban his latest book; The Hill, June 18, 2025

  JUDY KURTZ , The Hill; Bill Clinton says he wondered if Trump administration might try to ban his latest book

"“Maya Angelou, who read the inaugural poem at my first inauguration — wrote it, and read it and was a great human being — the first thing the White House did was to ban her book, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,'” Clinton recalled.

Angelou’s 1969 autobiography was reportedly one of nearly 400 books that was pulled from the U.S. Naval Academy library in April as part of an effort to remove titles containing diversity, equity and inclusion content. 

Calling it a “magnificent book,” Clinton reflected on Angelou’s personal story about a child who “loses the ability to speak for a couple of years because she was abused, and then she blooms.”

“I couldn’t figure out why that was a problem,” Clinton said.

“I don’t like book banning,” the 42nd president added.

“I wasn’t ever for banning books that were full of things they said about me that weren’t true,” Clinton said.

“It never occurred to me that I should stop you from reading them.”"

Unbound Pages: Authors Against Book Bans fights for the freedom to read; WGBH, June 20, 2025

 Andrea Asuaje, WGBH; Unbound Pages: Authors Against Book Bans fights for the freedom to read

"Thousands of books are facing scrutiny throughout the country as the book-banning movement continues to gain support, from Florida, to Wisconsin and even New Hampshire. Now, hundreds of authors are using their voices off the page to spread awareness about the effect book bans have on democracy and free speech.

The organization Authors Against Book Bans (AABB), which was formed in 2024, is focused on the freedom to read and composed of authors from all genres who write for readers of all ages. Many of the members have had their work challenged or banned, like AABB board member, Adib Khorram, author of several books including the often-challenged or banned “Darius The Great Is Not Okay.” The book and its sequel, “Darius The Great Deserves Better,” have come under fire for addressing race, sexuality and, according to Khorram, Marxist ideology."

Trump administration could change the way we read, from book bans to author talks; USA TODAY, June 18, 2025

 Clare Mulroy , USA TODAY; Trump administration could change the way we read, from book bans to author talks

"Hazelwood's tour snag sparked a discussion on book communities about how President Donald Trump's recent policies would trickle down to publishing. Amid book banning, border policies, new anti-DEI sentiments and federal library grant cuts, these are the ways the new administration may impact readers. 

Trump administration's policies shake author tour plans...

Authors worry about impact of Trump, DEI backslide...

Grant cuts threaten libraries, public spaces for readers...

Book banning continues in libraries, classrooms"

Carla Hayden on her time as a pioneering librarian of Congress and getting fired by Trump; PBS News, June 20, 2025

 Geoff Bennett , PBS News; Carla Hayden on her time as a pioneering librarian of Congress and getting fired by Trump

"Geoff Bennett: What effect do you believe censorship has on our democracy?

• Dr. Carla Hayden:

  As Alberto Manguel said, as centuries of dictators, tyrants, slave owners and other illicit holders of power have known, an illiterate crowd is the easiest to rule. And if you cannot restrict a people from learning to read, you must limit its scope.

  And that is the danger of making sure that people don't have access.

• Geoff Bennett:

  She says she will keep advocating for her beliefs and feels bolstered by support from elected officials on both sides of the aisle, as well as from people across the country.

  She shared that her 93-year-old mother has been cataloging the notes and messages she's received. A former president of the American Library Association, Hayden is set to address some of its 50,000 members at their annual meeting. This year's agenda, she says, takes on new urgency.

• Dr. Carla Hayden:

  How to help communities support their libraries, how to deal with personal attacks that libraries are having, even death threats in some communities for libraries.

  So this convening of librarians that are in schools, universities, public libraries will be really our rally. We have been called feisty fighters for freedom."

Conservative groups demand Congress protect intellectual property from patent abuse; Washington Examiner, June 18, 2025

Ross O'Keefe , Washington Examiner; Conservative groups demand Congress protect intellectual property from patent abuse

"A collection of 28 conservative groups is urging Republican Congress members to pass the PERA, PREVAIL, and RESTORE acts — all aimed at patent protection — as Chinese influence permeates U.S.intellectual property...

The PREVAIL Act, or Promoting and Respecting Economically Vital American Innovation Leadership, was introduced by Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) in the last Congress and aims to “invest in inventors in the United States, maintain the United States as the leading innovation economy in the world, and protect the property rights of the inventors that grow the economy of the United States.”

The PERA Act, or the Patent Eligibility Restoration, was introduced by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) also in the last Congress and aims to restore patent eligibility to several fields. Lastly, the RESTORE Act, or Realizing Engineering, Science, and Technology Opportunities by Restoring Exclusive Patent Rights, works to give patent owners the right to a “rebuttable presumption that the court should grant a permanent injunction with respect to that infringing conduct” if a court finds that there was an infringement of a right secured by patent.

All three acts could work as pro-patent freedom legislation, possibly helping U.S. intellectual property owners fight back against Big Tech and China."

US patent office wants an AI to scan for prior art, but doesn't want to pay for it; The Register, June 20, 2025

 Brandon Vigliarolo,  The Register; US patent office wants an AI to scan for prior art, but doesn't want to pay for it

"There is some irony in using AI bots, which are often trained on copyrighted material for which AI firms have shown little regard, to assess the validity of new patents. 

It may not be the panacea the USPTO is hoping for. Lawyers have been embracing AI for something very similar - scanning particular, formal documentation for specific details related to a new analysis - and it's sometimes backfired as the AI has gotten certain details wrong. The Register has reported on numerous instances of legal professionals practically begging to be sanctioned for not bothering to do their legwork, as judges caught them using AI, which borked citations to other legal cases. 

The risk of hallucinating patents that don't exist, or getting patent numbers or other details wrong, means that there'll have to be at least some human oversight. The USPTO had no comment on how this might be accomplished."

‘Wall-E With a Gun’: Midjourney Generates Videos of Disney Characters Amid Massive Copyright Lawsuit; Wired, June 20, 2025

Kate Knibbs, Reece Rogers , Wired; ‘Wall-E With a Gun’: Midjourney Generates Videos of Disney Characters Amid Massive Copyright Lawsuit

"MIDJOURNEY’S NEW AI-GENERATED video tool will produce animated clips featuring copyrighted characters from Disney and Universal, WIRED has found—including video of the beloved Pixar character Wall-E holding a gun."

Two Major Lawsuits Aim to Answer a Multi-Billion-Dollar Question: Can AI Train on Your Creative Work Without Permission?; The National Law Review, June 18, 2025

 Andrew R. Lee, Timothy P. Scanlan, Jr. of Jones Walker LLP , The National Law Review; Two Major Lawsuits Aim to Answer a Multi-Billion-Dollar Question: Can AI Train on Your Creative Work Without Permission?

"In a London courtroom, lawyers faced off in early June in a legal battle that could shape the future relationship between artificial intelligence and creative work. The case pits Getty Images, a major provider of stock photography, against Stability AI, the company behind the popular AI art generator, Stable Diffusion.

At the heart of the dispute is Getty's claim that Stability AI unlawfully used 12 million of its copyrighted images to train its AI model. The outcome of this case could establish a critical precedent for whether AI companies can use publicly available online content for training data or if they will be required to license it.

On the first day of trial, Getty's lawyer told the London High Court that the company “recognises that the AI industry overall may be a force for good,” but that did not justify AI companies “riding roughshod over intellectual property rights.”

A Key Piece of Evidence

A central component of Getty's case is the observation that Stable Diffusion's output sometimes includes distorted versions of the Getty Images watermark. Getty argues this suggests its images were not only used for training but are also being partially reproduced by the AI model.

Stability AI has taken the position that training an AI model on images constitutes a transformative use of that data. The argument is that teaching a machine from existing information is fundamentally different from direct copying."

The Fight Over AI Is Just Beginning, and Artists Like Elton John Are Leading the Way; Billboard, June 18, 2025

ROBERT LEVINE, Billboard ;The  Fight Over AI Is Just Beginning, and Artists Like Elton John Are Leading the Way

Five Months into the Trump Presidency: Charting the latest offensives against libraries and how advocates are pushing back; American Libraries, June 18, 2025

 Hannah Weinberg  , American Libraries; Five Months into the Trump Presidency: Charting the latest offensives against libraries and how advocates are pushing back

"Since our last report, libraries have continued to experience significant upheaval from President Trump’s actions. In May, the Trump administration fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden and Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter. We also saw legal cases challenging the administration’s defunding of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) continue to make their way through the courts in May and June. Meanwhile, library advocates contacted their legislators to fight for federal library funding in fiscal year (FY) 2026.

Here are several updates on the attacks against libraries across the US and the ways in which library supporters are pushing back."

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

 Nitin Nohria

• archive page

, 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."