A Grand Battle Between Copyright Laws And AI Emerges – Will Businesses Be Able To Sustain?

So, it all began with a revelation when McKerann discovered her artwork has been used to train an AI system! Fueled by curiosity, Kelly McKernan entered her own name into the search bar, triggering a search through the LAION dataset.

LAION is a vast data collection that makes machine learning resources available to the general public and feeds into artificial intelligence image generators, including the notable Stable Diffusion. It allows writers to check if their artworks have been used to train Generative AI datasets – sometimes without the artists' consent. McKerann "felt sick" to see over 50 pieces of artwork had been uploaded onto LAION.

"Suddenly all of these paintings that I had a personal relationship, and journey with, had a new meaning, it changed my relationship with those artworks," said McKernan. "I felt violated. If someone can type my name [into an AI tool] to make a book cover and not hire me, that affects my career and so many other people,” she continued.

This incident sparks broader questions about the implications of generative AI systems trained on massive amounts of data, encompassing text, images, videos and audio sourced from the boundless expanse of the internet. These AI systems can churn out content at an astonishing pace, all triggered by a simple text prompt.

A report says that small and large businesses stand on the verge of a paradigm shift as AI increasingly permeates creative processes. With innovation comes a challenge – the intricate maze of copyright. Nations worldwide are hustling to respond to this new realm of AI prowess, catalyzing the evolution of legal and ethical frameworks.

Arty Rajendra, a distinguished intellectual property lawyer at Osborne Clarke, raises poignant concerns. "AI throws up lots of intellectual property queries and because machines are trained on a lot of data and information that's protected by intellectual property, I'm not sure users or AI [companies] understand that." she cautions.

"Courts haven't been asked to determine it yet but there's several cases in the UK and US including Getty now which will determine if it is infringement and who is liable. There's data protections and moral questions that have to be answered as well. What we might see is some kind of settlements, and maybe some license fees," she added.

In March, Professor Ben Zhao and his team at the University of Chicago introduced a groundbreaking tool named Glaze. This software offers a shield of protection for artists against the encroachment of generative AI models.

"For each image, we are able to compute a small set of pixel-level changes that dramatically change how an AI art model 'sees' the art while minimizing visual changes to how humans see the art," explained Prof. Zhao.