A recent U.S. class action lawsuit has created a roadmap that is likely to guide future artificial intelligence (AI) copyright infringement cases.
In Andersen et al. v. Stability AI Ltd., a California judge recently allowed a somewhat ground-breaking copyright infringement lawsuit filed by a group of visual artists to proceed against Stability AI, Midjourney and other AI-related companies on a number of contentious issues.
The artists have alleged that generative artificial intelligence services violate their copyright and are seeking damages over uncompensated and unauthorized use of billions of images downloaded from the internet to train AI systems.
The judge's ruling in this case has captured the attention of the various stakeholders in the AI industry, including developers and users of it. Up to this point, much of what has been talked about and written about has been hypothetical and theoretical.
This is where the rubber now hits the road on many of these issues.
The ultimate issues of liability are still to be decided since this was only a motion by the defendants to strike allegations on the grounds that they disclose no cause of action.
But the decision is still significant in that the court is allowing important allegations to proceed. There is going to be discovery on these issues and the plaintiffs will get to open the box and see what's going on with these AI data sets. Their lawyers will have the opportunity to explore exactly how the material in question is being used. Many of the allegations regarding how this technology works have been unproven to this point.
This judge's decision creates a structure around how these cases can be pleaded and advanced.
There are a number of legal and factual issues to be explored such as: Is the data set itself an infringing work? Are AI companies infringing on protected works with their technology or are they just inducing consumers of the technology to infringe? To what extent does the creation of the data set involve the copying of protected works?
This is yet another frontier of new technology where old legal concepts will need to be applied.
While this is undoubtedly a promising decision for creators of traditional works, it is not a promising decision for everyone. Many developers of AI and many users will be watching nervously as the case proceeds.
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