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On Tue, 15 Apr, 12:02 AM UTC
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Sick of Pesky IP Laws Slowing AI Growth, Tech Titans Think Everything Should be Public Now
Meta wants your posts for AI training. Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, too. If you live in the European Union, your posts on Meta platforms will now help to feed its extremely hungry AI models. In a blog post titled "Making AI Work Harder for Europeans" (please hold your eye roll), the company announced that it will start to use public-facing interactions across its platforms like Facebook and Instagram to train large language models, in the latest of Big Tech players declaring that your content should belong to them. According to the post, posts and comments made by adult users will be fed into the machine, as will questions and queries that people submit in interactions with Meta AI. According to Meta, scraping all these interactions and using them as training data "will better support millions of people and businesses in the EU by teaching AI at Meta to better understand and reflect their cultures, languages and history." Just as a quick aside: we have anthropologists and ethnographers, and linguists who specialize not only in preserving culture, language, and history but also help to contextualize it so we understand why something mattersâ€"something that AI can't do because it doesn't understand what you are feeding it. But sure, we can pour all of our posts into these black boxes and assume that what it's spitting back is a true and accurate replication despite its tendency to hallucinate no matter how good the data isâ€"all while funding for actual preservation work evaporates. Anyway. Starting next week, Meta will send notifications to EU users that their posts may be used to train AI. The notifications will include a link to a form where users can object to their data being used for these purposes. The company also reiterated that it will not use private messages to train AI. Meta's decision to put posts through the content grinder and turn it into LLM feed is just the latest example of AI Big Tech players putting their finger on the scale to say your content is not yours. Over the weekend, Block CEO and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey posted "delete all IP law"â€"a comment that Elon Musk replied to in agreement. It's hard not to read that statement in the context of the ongoing lawsuits between AI companies and IP and copyright holders who are trying to keep their information out of training models (at least without getting paid for it). And, indeed, Dorsey basically confirmed it was at least partially on his mind in the replies, in which he took on several people who pointed out that IP helps protect the work of creators from getting swallowed by AI without compensation. Dorsey insisted "there are much greater models to pay creators" and "all people should have 100% agency over their data and permission in/out services that want to use it," which he claimed was "a very simple model to build and enforce." Seems like maybe he should build that, then! Both Musk and Dorsey, of course, have used IP law to protect their own projects. Dorsey insisted that it's just defense against trolls and not something he believes inâ€"and look, there is no question that the current IP system has problems and is abused by big players. And Musk has pledged that Tesla won't go after companies who want to use its technology in good faithâ€"though it did sue a company for infringing on the company's battery patents, but hey, good faith is in the eye of the patent holder. It just seems mighty convenient that two guys heavily invested in AI suddenly seem to think the system that they used to protect and build their own empires is no longer needed now that it restricts their access to the lifeblood of AI training.
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Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk call to delete IP laws, but artists are pushing back
Artists react to Jack Dorsey saying "delete all IP law." Credit: Joe Raedle / Getty Images As artists fight to protect their works from being used to train AI models, Jack Dorsey wants to eliminate intellectual property (IP) laws altogether. Elon Musk agrees. On Friday, the cofounder of X (then Twitter) and Block (then Square) posted on X, "delete all IP law." Elon Musk, the current leader of X, chimed in to comment, "I agree." Taken together, these two statements contain just six words, yet they could have big implications for the future of intellectual property in the AI era. This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Earlier that Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was interviewed by TED's Chris Anderson at its eponymous conference. Anderson showed Altman an AI-generated cartoon strip of Charlie Brown, saying, "it looks like IP theft." Anderson asked whether OpenAI had a licensing deal with the Peanuts estate. Altman didn't directly answer the question but instead affirmed that OpenAI wants "to build tools that lift [the creative spirit of humanity] up," and then added, "we probably do need to figure out some sort of new model around economics of creative output." Dorsey, Musk, and Altman's words underscore a common belief amongst tech entrepreneurs that copyright laws need to evolve to account for the potential of generative AI. Already, both OpenAI and Google have openly lobbied the U.S. government to allow AI models to train on protected works such as movies, articles, and music. They want such use to fall under the fair use legal doctrine, with OpenAI calling it a matter of "national security." But to many artists and advocacy groups, any call to "delete all IP laws" sounds like a direct attack on their rights. These artists argue that AI companies are both profiting from and competing with their work, in violation of existing copyright laws. Over 50,000 artists including Thom Yorke, James Patterson, and Julianne Moore recently signed an open letter, which stated, "the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted." And a letter signed by Hollywood creatives including Ron Howard, Paul McCartney, and Cynthia Erivo was sent to the White House in protest of Google and OpenAI's lobbying for deregulating the AI industry. "Intellectual property law is rooted in the U.S. Constitution as a tool to promote creativity, not suppress it. It ensures that those who contribute to cultural and scientific progress are recognized, protected, and compensated," said Atreya Mathur, director of Legal Research at the Center for Art Law, in an email to Mashable. "Elimination of such laws would ignore that very purpose and devalue the labor and rights of creators, including those whose work powers these technologies." And on X, Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained, which advocates for ethically sourced training data, said, "Tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don't want their life's work pillaged for profit." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Other X users pointed out that Dorsey, who became a billionaire by founding his companies, did so with the help of IP protections: "Everybody becomes a free-market libertarian once they make their bag." This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. As tech heavyweights seek a legal blessing for AI's "freedom to learn," they'll have to face huge swaths of the entertainment industry first.
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'Delete all IP law' says Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey: 'Creativity is what currently separates us, and the current system is limiting that'
Jack Dorsey, the ex-CEO and co-founder of Twitter, has taken to his... X account to post a debate-sparking statement: "Delete all IP law." Elon Musk responded to the tweet/xeet with a similarly brief "I agree", as the thread descended into a full on internet slappy fight between intellectual property defenders and those that seem to feel that IP law is a barrier to progress in the modern age. "Agreed. Burn the entire regime," posted one user, while others pointed out examples of intellectual property belonging to Block, Inc (formerly Square, Inc), a company co-founded by Dorsey. Dorsey appeared to double-down on his argument (via Techcrunch). In response to a post arguing that IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations, he responded: "Creativity is what currently separates us, and the current system is limiting that, and putting the payments (sic) disbursement into the hands of gatekeepers who aren't paying out fairly." Which sounds like a call for IP law reform, not its removal, to me. Quite what has caused Dorsey to openly call for IP law to be "deleted" is unclear. However, Dorsey-created X competitor, BlueSky, was created on an open source protocol, and his newest AI venture, an AI assistant called "Goose", uses an open source model. Dorsey appears to be a fan of the open use of information, and not, it seems, legally-protected IP rights, at least under the current system. Musk, meanwhile, has previously stated that "patents are for the weak", despite having a total of 25 of them credited to his name. The world's richest man has previously pledged he would not enforce legal action against other companies that used Tesla's patents in good faith. Intellectual property rights are a hot topic in the modern age of AI, as it's been repeatedly claimed that various tech companies have been illegally scraping copyrighted data to train their AI models. OpenAI has recently set out a number of proposals for the US government, encouraging it to enact a copyright strategy that "promotes the freedom to learn" in the face of Chinese competition, specifically to "avoid forfeiting our AI lead to the [People's Republic of China] by preserving American AI models." Both Dorsey and Musk are heavily entrenched in AI development -- and AI, it appears, has an intellectual rights problem. Musk's position as a man with the ear of President Trump makes his comments particularly concerning, although IP law reform (or "deletion") doesn't appear to be high on the current US government's agenda -- which instead seems to be focussed on changing its mind regarding tariff rates on an almost daily basis. Still, both Dorsey and Musk have a significant voice in the tech industry -- and serious financial power -- and these comments feel like a potential escalation in the ongoing debate around who (if anyone) should own the rights to intellectual works, with some incredibly wealthy and influential players throwing their hats into the ring. As to whether this is indicative of potential sweeping changes to intellectual property rights in years to come? Your guess is as good as mine. Still, as X user @poordart puts it (quite succinctly, in my opinion): "Everybody becomes a free-market libertarian once they make their bag."
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Jack Dorsey Says Intellectual Property Law Shouldn't Exist, and Elon Musk Agrees: 'Delete All IP Law'
Copyright holders have filed dozens of lawsuits over the past few years against AI companies using their work without permission. Can intellectual property survive as AI advances and allegedly uses copyrighted work as training material? Twitter (now X) co-founder Jack Dorsey recently weighed in on the debate, taking to X on Friday to call for an end to intellectual property law, which covers areas like copyright, patents, and trademarks -- and Elon Musk approved of his stance. Dorsey immediately received pushback from lawyer and former 2024 vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan. Shanahan, who was married to Google co-founder Sergey Brin until 2023, told Dorsey that IP law was the "only" barrier between work created by human beings and work by AI. "IP law is the only thing separating human creations from AI creations," Shanahan wrote in a reply to Dorsey's post. "If you want to reform it, let's talk!" Dorsey objected, replying that "creativity" is what separates humans from AI and that the legal system is currently inhibiting creativity. While Dorsey may want to end intellectual property law, copyright holders are still holding on to their work. Dozens of cases have been filed over the past few years in U.S. federal court against AI companies like OpenAI, Google, and Meta, as authors, artists, and news organizations accuse these companies of using their copyrighted work to train AI models without credit or compensation. AI needs ample training material to keep it sharp. It took about 300 billion words to train ChatGPT, an AI chatbot now used by over 500 million people weekly. AI image generator DALL·E 2 needed "hundreds of millions of captioned images from the internet" to become operational. Related: Jack Dorsey Announces His Departure from Bluesky on X, Calls Elon Musk's Platform 'Freedom Technology' The first U.S. ruling on AI copyright law arrived in February when a Delaware federal court ruled that legal research firm Ross Intelligence was not allowed to copy content from Thomson Reuters. Ross Intelligence asserted it was allowed to utilize copyrighted material to train its AI under the fair use doctrine, which permits the use of a copyrighted work in specific circumstances. However, the court dismissed the fair use defense because the AI training data was employed in a commercial context. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman commented on fair use in AI copyright law at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. Suleyman stated then that almost all web content was fair use for "anyone" to copy or recreate, with the possible exception of some news sites and publishers that have asked not to be scraped. "That's the gray area, and I think that's going to work its way through the courts," Suleyman said, at the time.
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Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk advocate for the removal of intellectual property laws, igniting controversy over AI training data and creators' rights. This move faces strong opposition from artists and the entertainment industry.
In a controversial move, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have publicly advocated for the elimination of intellectual property (IP) laws. Dorsey's statement, "delete all IP law," posted on X (formerly Twitter), was met with agreement from Musk, sparking a heated debate about the future of copyright in the age of artificial intelligence 12.
This call for IP law elimination comes amid ongoing efforts by major AI companies to reshape copyright regulations. OpenAI and Google have been lobbying the U.S. government to allow AI models to train on protected works under the fair use doctrine, arguing it's a matter of "national security" 2. These tech giants are seeking legal blessings for AI's "freedom to learn," potentially at the expense of creators' rights 3.
The tech leaders' stance has met strong opposition from artists, authors, and advocacy groups. Over 50,000 artists, including notable figures like Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore, have signed an open letter opposing the unlicensed use of creative works for AI training 2. They argue that such practices pose an "unjust threat to the livelihoods" of creators 2.
Atreya Mathur, director of Legal Research at the Center for Art Law, emphasized that IP law is rooted in the U.S. Constitution to promote creativity and ensure recognition and compensation for creators 2. Critics argue that eliminating IP laws would devalue the labor and rights of creators whose work powers AI technologies 2.
Both Dorsey and Musk have previously benefited from IP protections in building their own companies. This apparent shift in stance has led to accusations of hypocrisy, with some suggesting that their position conveniently aligns with their current interests in AI development 34.
The debate highlights the growing tension between AI advancement and copyright protection. AI models require vast amounts of training data, often including copyrighted material. For instance, ChatGPT was trained on about 300 billion words, while DALL·E 2 used hundreds of millions of captioned images from the internet 4.
Recent legal rulings have started to address AI and copyright law. In February, a Delaware federal court ruled against the use of copyrighted content for AI training in a commercial context, rejecting a fair use defense 4. This decision may set a precedent for future cases, as dozens of lawsuits have been filed against AI companies by copyright holders 4.
As the debate intensifies, it's clear that the intersection of AI development and intellectual property rights will continue to be a contentious issue. The tech industry's push for more lenient copyright laws for AI training is meeting strong resistance from creators and traditional media. The outcome of this debate could have far-reaching implications for both technological innovation and creative industries in the years to come.
Reference
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OpenAI and Google advocate for looser copyright restrictions on AI training data in their proposals for the US government's AI Action Plan, citing the need to compete with China and promote innovation.
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Over 400 celebrities and entertainment industry leaders have signed an open letter urging the Trump administration to protect copyright laws from AI companies seeking unrestricted access to copyrighted content for training purposes.
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Recent court rulings and ongoing debates highlight the complex intersection of AI, copyright law, and intellectual property rights, as the industry grapples with defining fair use in the age of machine learning.
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Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, discusses the challenges of copyright and compensation in AI-generated art, proposing new revenue-sharing models and emphasizing the need for balance between innovation and fair compensation for artists.
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The US Copyright Office's latest report on AI and copyright leaves the fair use question unresolved, suggesting case-by-case evaluation for AI training data usage.
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