AI and copyrights: The fight for fair use
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Big tech companies Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic have been facing a growing number of lawsuits. Authors and creators say these companies are using their books and other creative works to train powerful AI without permission or payment.These cases highlight how " fair use " works in the age of artificial intelligence (AI).Recently, Meta won a lawsuit from 2023 , against a group of authors who claimed the tech major used their copyrighted books to train its AI without their permission. The judge, Vince Chhabria, sided with Meta, saying the authors didn't make the right arguments and didn't have enough proof. However, the judge also said that using copyrighted works to train AI could still be against the law in "many situations."This decision is similar to another case involving Anthropic , another AI firm. In that case, Judge William Alsup said Anthropic's use of books for training was "exceedingly transformative", meaning it changed the original work so much it fell under fair use. According to Fortune magazine's website, copyrighted material can be used without permission under the fair use doctrine if the use transforms the work, by serving a new purpose or adding new meaning, instead of merely copying the original.However, the judge also found Anthropic broke the law by keeping pirated copies of the books in a digital library and has ordered a separate trial on that matter, to determine its liability, if any.This was the first time a US court ruled on whether using copyrighted material without permission for AI training is legal.The legal battles continue in a new lawsuit in New York , in which authors, including Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, and Daniel Okrent, are accusing Microsoft of using nearly 200,000 pirated digital books to train its Megatron AI.In April, OpenAI faced several copyright cases brought by prominent authors and news outlets . "We welcome this development and look forward to making it clear in court that our models are trained on publicly available data, grounded in fair use, and supportive of innovation," an OpenAI spokesperson said at that time, as reported by Reuters.These lawsuits show a big disagreement between tech companies and people who own copyrights. Companies often say their use is "fair use" to avoid paying for licences. But authors and other creators want to be paid when their work helps power these new AI systems.
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