Chamber of Progress, a tech industry coalition whose members include Amazon, Apple And Metalaunches campaign to defend the legality of using copyrighted works to train artificial intelligence systems.
The group says the campaign, titled “Generate and Create” and unveiled Thursday, will aim to highlight “how artists are using generative AI to improve their creative output” and “show how AI lowers barriers to production artistic” as part of an initiative to “defend the long-standing legal principle of fair use under copyright law.”
Without Congressional intervention, the legality of using copyrighted works in training datasets will be decided by the courts. The question will likely be answered in part by fair use, which protects the use of copyrighted material to create a secondary work as long as it is “transformative.” This remains one of the key battlegrounds for widespread adoption of AI, with some companies putting guardrails in place due to legal ambiguity.
“The principle of fair use is well established over decades of copyright law,” says CEO Adam Kovacevich, a former Google executive. “All art responded to what preceded it.”
The campaign’s logo, song and mascot, “Arty Fish”, were created using ChatGPT, Suno and Midjourney respectively – all AI tools.
Midjourney is currently facing a class-action lawsuit from artists accusing the company of copyright infringement for using billions of images downloaded from the Internet to train its AI system. The lawsuit alleges that technology threatens, among other things, the job market for artists.
Asked about allegations of AI companies using copyrighted works to teach their technology, Kovacevich says that “fair use has always protected creative inspiration.” He adds: “To the extent that human artists have always built their art on the basis of what came before them, this is also what gen AI services do. »
In comments to the Copyright Office, which has studied policy issues surrounding the intersection of intellectual property and AI, Chamber of Progress argued that Section 230 – Big Tech’s preferred legal shield – should be expanded to immunize AI companies from certain infringement lawsuits.
“One of the criteria for determining safe harbor eligibility could involve an assessment of the size and diversity of the training dataset used for the model,” he said in his memory. “Furthermore, given the inherently opaque nature of generative AI models and the unpredictable behavior of human users, Congress could consider legislation establishing an accountability framework that protects generative AI services from liability when users submit intentionally requests motivated by an infringement.”
The group added that any new legislation should ensure that the responsibility for identifying specific works used in training datasets lies with the copyright holders.
The agency also gathered feedback from SAG-AFTRA, the Writers Guild of America and the Director’s Guild of America, among other major players in the entertainment and media industries.
Chamber of Progress also weighed in on a class action lawsuit filed by music publishers against Anthropic. He also opposed Tennessee’s passage of legislation specifically aimed at protecting musicians from the unauthorized use of AI to imitate their voices without permission. The Voice and Image Security Act, or ELVIS Act, builds on the state’s previous Right of Publicity law by adding an individual’s “voice” to the domain it protected. California has not yet updated its status.
As part of the campaign, the Chamber of Progress will hire a director of AI policy, creativity and copyright to lead the initiative.
“The AI generation is a net positive for creativity in general,” says Kovacevich. “This expands access to creative tools for more and more people and bypasses many traditional access controls.”
