Legal Issues With Generative AI

Generative AI is an umbrella term used to describe any form of artificial intelligence that creates content.

Three key intellectual property issues are raised by AI:

All creators, no matter their field, are likely to be interested in AI and, at the same time as they are concerned by it, look at AI as being a tool that can help them.

AI will only be as good as the data on which it is trained, but if creative industry jobs are lost then the new works necessary to supplement these datasets will be lost with those jobs.

One of the first lawsuits in this area involves Getty Images, which has one of the world’s largest image and video libraries. Getty brought a claim against Stable Diffusion in the UK and Delaware involving not just copyright, based on the scraping of 12 million images, but also the data that goes with those images. Getty also brought claims for trademark infringement because the stock photo industry uses watermarks, which were often visible and distorted in content created by Stable Diffusion.

Another case involves a class action brought by three artists, and purporting to represent the interests of thousands of creators, against AI art generators.

Guardrails are needed. Platforms should offer a “safe mode” based on datasets that are licensed, allow users to avoid creating something that is in the style of a living artist or author, and prevent the digital recreation of real places so that it is harder to generate “fake news.”

Tools now exist allowing creators to detect whether their content has been used on some platforms.

For AI companies, given likely future regulation, licensing is the way to go. Where an AI has scraped the internet indiscriminately – acquiring news, photos and content involving real people who have never given permission for their likeness to be used for commercial purposes  – there is a clear risk of liability.