When I was planning to start The Illusion of More, I contemplated a category of posts under the heading We Don’t Need This. Although abandoned, I thought it might be an editorial framework for articles about innovations that really aren’t innovative, and the low-tech invention that originally inspired the idea was the kiddie-car/shopping-cart hybrid. In case you haven’t had the ...
In my last post, I focused on the hypothetical fair use defense of generative AI under the principles articulated in the Google Books decision of 2014. In this post, I want to address another claim that has arisen—both on social media, and in comments to the Copyright Office—namely that generative AI companies should be shielded against secondary liability for copyright ...
After the Supreme Court’s decision in AWF v. Goldsmith restored what many of us view as common sense to the fair use doctrine of transformativeness, the flurry of litigation against AI developers will test the same principle in a different light. As discussed on this blog and elsewhere, caselaw has produced two frameworks for considering whether the “purpose and character” of ...
On October 30, Judge Orrick of the Northern District of California largely granted the AI companies’ motions to dismiss the class-action complaints filed by Sarah Andersen, Karla Ortiz, and Kelly McKernan on behalf of all visual artists whose works have been used without permission for the purpose of “training” generative AI models. Several complaints were dismissed with leave to amend, ...
Below are the responses I submitted to selected questions in the U.S. Copyright Office Notice of Inquiry and request for comments on artificial intelligence. 8.1. In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions in Google v. Oracle America and Andy Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith, how should the “purpose and character” of the use of copyrighted works to train an AI ...
