The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act: An “Ethical and Transparent” AI Bill Protecting Artists’ Rights

By Moon Harper

Apr 10, 2024 01:37 AM EDT

AI Copyright Bill — (Photo : Unsplash/Markus Winkler )

A new bill introduced in the US Congress on Tuesday seeks to force artificial intelligence companies to disclose the copyrighted material they use to develop generative AI models.

AI's Potential Copyright Violations

This legislative move contributes to a growing wave of initiatives spearheaded by lawmakers, news organizations, and artists aimed at scrutinizing AI firms' practices to shed light on the extent to which these companies rely on copyrighted content such as songs, visual art, books, and movies to train their software and address concerns regarding potential copyright violations in the process.

California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff has brought forward the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, which is legislation mandating AI companies to disclose any copyrighted works present in their training datasets to the Register of Copyrights before launching new generative AI systems that are capable of generating text, images, music, or video in response to user input. Under the bill's provisions, companies must submit these documents at least 30 days before the public release of their AI tools or incur financial penalties. These datasets often comprise vast amounts of content, including billions of lines of text, images, or millions of hours of music and movies.

In a statement, Congressman Adam Schiff highlighted AI's disruptive potential in reshaping the economy, political structures, and everyday existence, emphasizing the necessity of maintaining equilibrium between leveraging AI's potential capabilities and implementing essential ethical guidelines and protections.

The legality of whether major artificial intelligence companies, valued in the billions, have unlawfully utilized copyrighted works is becoming a subject of litigation and government scrutiny. Schiff's bill does not seek to prohibit AI from training on copyrighted material. Instead, it imposes a substantial responsibility on companies to disclose the extensive array of works they utilize in developing tools such as ChatGPT, whose data is typically kept confidential.

Growing Support From The Entertainment Industry

Schiff's bill, initially reported by Billboard, has garnered support from various entertainment industry organizations and unions, including the Recording Industry Association, Professional Photographers, the Directors Guild, and the Federation of Television and Radio Artists Screen Actors Guild.

Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the national executive director and negotiator of SAG-AFTRA, underscored the importance of protecting human creative content, stating that everything AI produces ultimately stems from human creativity.

AI Companies Confronting Legal Challenges

Prominent artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI are currently entangled in lawsuits regarding their alleged copyrighted material utilization in developing tools such as ChatGPT. Sarah Silverman and the New York Times have filed copyright infringement claims against the startup, which has enlisted numerous top-tier attorneys' services over the past year as it confronts more than a dozen significant legal challenges.

OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies have refuted allegations of wrongdoing, asserting that their utilization of copyrighted material is within the bounds of fair use, a legal doctrine permitting some unlicensed use of copyrighted materials under specific circumstances. This legal stance presents a significant challenge to copyright law, with potential repercussions that could impact artists' livelihoods or OpenAI's financial performance. In a submission to a UK government committee earlier this year, OpenAI's legal representatives argued that legally, copyright law does not prohibit training. Furthermore, OpenAI emphasized in the submission that their tools would be rendered inoperative without access to copyrighted works.

As generative AI companies have advanced their tools' capabilities, concerns have grown among entertainment industry workers regarding the technology's potential impact on artists' rights. Just last week, a coalition of over 200 prominent musical artists published an open letter advocating for greater safeguards against AI and urging companies to refrain from creating tools that could diminish or supplant the roles of musicians and songwriters.