Robert J. Marks on the Copyright Lawsuits Against the Chatbots
Essentially, the salad of material that the chatbot produces for users contains thousands of ingredients lifted without compensation from copyright holdersWalter Bradley Center director Robert J. Marks published an article today at Newsmax on the swamp of litigation the chatbot developers are finding themselves in. Both the New York Times and Authors’ Guild are suing OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT for copyright infringement. Artists are suing generative AI firms.
Essentially, the salad of material that the chatbot produces for users contains thousands of ingredients lifted without compensation from copyright holders.
Marks, a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at Baylor University, points to the fate of Napster, an online music service that tried something similar at the turn of the millennium:
It revolutionized the way people shared and downloaded music over the internet and allowed users to connect their computers to share music files.
I used it. Almost everybody connected to the internet did. Everyone was listening to music without any compensation being given to the artists or the songwriters.
For a brief period, the world had free access to most of the music ever recorded. But Napster’s rapid rise in popularity sparked legal battles with the music industry. Record companies and artists argued that Napster was guilty of copyright infringement on a massive scale.
Robert J. Marks, “Will AI Mean No More Free Lunch Online?” NewsMax, January 18, 2024
After losing a legal battle, Napster was forced to shut down. Will things go the same way this time? Marks isn’t sure. You can read more of his thinking at Newsmax.
What he is sure of is: “There is no free lunch. Napster was free. Spotify isn’t. If generative AI begins to pay royalties, no more freebees. We users will probably also pay.”
But then artists must eat too.
You may also wish to read: Robert J. Marks to speak at the Big Sky Conference in Billings, Montana. He will focus on the way in which, while AI offers exciting possibilities, many claims for AI are provably overblown. Marks points out in his work that many key acts of the mind, especially those involving creativity, are non-computable and AI doesn’t and can’t do them.
