How AI copyright lawsuits could make the whole industry go extinct

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Our new Thursday episodes are all about deep dives into big topics in the news, and for the next few weeks we’re going to stay focused on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. There’s a lot going on in the world of generative AI, but maybe the biggest is the increasing number of copyright lawsuits being filed against AI companies like OpenAI and StabilityAI.

So for this episode, we’re going to talk about those cases, and the main defense the AI companies are relying on: an idea called fair use. To help explain this mess, I talked with Sarah Jeong. Sarah is a former lawyer and a features editor here at The Verge, and she is also one of my very favorite people to talk to about copyright. I promise you we didn’t get totally off the rails nerding out about it, but we went a little off the rails. The first thing we had to figure out was: How big a deal are these AI copyright suits?

Links:

• The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement --- The Verge
• The scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next — The Verge
• How copyright lawsuits could kill OpenAI — Vox
• How Adobe is managing the AI copyright dilemma, with general counsel Dana Rao --- The Verge
• Generative AI Has a visual plagiarism problem - IEEE Spectrum
• George Carlin estate sues creators of AI-generated comedy special — THR
• AI-Generated Taylor Swift porn went viral on Twitter. Here's how it got there — 404 Media
• AI copyright lawsuit hinges on the legal concept of ‘fair use’ — The Washington Post
• Intellectual property experts discuss fair use in the age of AI — Harvard Law School
• OpenAI says it’s “impossible” to create useful AI models without copyrighted material — Ars Technica

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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