As part of the US Copyright Office’s study of generative AI and potential copyright law changes, a number of AI companies have submitted their thoughts.
The Verge collected the opinions of Meta, Google, Microsoft, Stability AI, Anthropic and other firms and surmised that broadly speaking “the AI companies have all kinds of arguments against paying for copyrighted content”.
And it’s true: they do.
“A diverse array of cases supports the proposition that copying of a copyrighted work as an intermediate step to create a non-infringing output can constitute fair use,” claimed Anthropic, which is currently being sued by music publishers alleging copyright infringement of lyrics in its Claude chatbot.
“We believe that training AI models is an acceptable, transformative, and socially-beneficial use of existing content that is protected by the fair use doctrine and furthers the objectives of copyright law,” suggested Stability AI, which has been sued by Getty Images and visual artists.
Google, meanwhile, offered that training an AI is “like the act of reading a book and learning the facts and ideas within it, would not only be non-infringing, it would further the very purpose of copyright law.” That said, its submission also flagged up its partnership with UMG and musicians.
Will music industry rightsholders and bodies agree with the fair-use claims? You don’t need us to tell you they will not. We’ll be reporting on their submissions to the Copyright Office study to map out their opposing views.
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