AI Lawsuits - The Global Top 5
AI Lawsuits - The Global Top 5
PLUS How to maximise your coding with AI
I admired and hated the devious nature of Open AI’s counter argument to The New York Times two weeks ago. The newspaper is busy suing the tech company for what it calls “free-riding” on its investment in journalism to train its AI models.
So, we arrive at this counter: OpenAI has requested for the NYT to disclose journalists’ confidential notes to prove the originality of their reporting, underlining a significant point: journalism, like AI, often involves learning from existing material.
Author Jeff Jarvis aptly summarised this situation by pointing out that the NYT’s allegations against OpenAI essentially accuse the AI of doing what journalists do every day: reading and learning from various sources to create something new. In his testimony before a Senate Commerce subcommittee, Jarvis highlighted how journalism depends on fair use, the right to read and learn from existing content to inform reporting. This fair use principle is also what AI developers rely on when training their models. I can feel a murmur from journalists saying, but reporting is to do good and this is to make a tech company rich.
OpenAI’s stance is that reading and learning from publicly available content should not be restricted, as long as the output does not verbatim reproduce copyrighted material. This principle aligns with how journalists use existing information to create new reports and stories, often drawing from public domain materials and other sources.
The Press Gazette report says that OpenAI argues the NYT should only assert copyright infringement on portions of work that are original and exclusively owned by the NYT. This means that any information copied from other sources or in the public domain should not be considered infringing. And basically the tech company is arguing that most of what goes in the newspaper is from other sources anyway.
The NYT views OpenAI’s demand for journalists’ notes as invasive and potentially harmful to journalistic integrity. They argue that such disclosures could hinder investigative journalism and set a dangerous precedent.
The NYT case is clearly number 1 in my top 5 of AI-related lawsuits. From copyright infringement to privacy issues, here we go with the rest:
2. UMG Recordings vs. Suno: Copyright Infringement
This could be potentially massive. Universal Music Group (UMG), along with other major record labels like Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group, has sued Suno, an AI music generation service. The lawsuit alleges that Suno has engaged in massive copyright infringement by copying and using vast amounts of copyrighted sound recordings to train its AI models without permission. This unlicensed use threatens to devalue genuine human-created music by flooding the market with AI-generated content that competes with and diminishes the original works. I created a song called “Cold Rage” (about ice-cream) using Suno a few weeks ago. Suno’s defence is that you can’t ask for a song that sounds like an artist (living or dead), but only request a certain genre.
3. Andre Dubus III & Susan Orlean vs. NVIDIA: Copyright Infringement
Andre Dubus III and Susan Orlean have filed a lawsuit against NVIDIA, accusing the tech giant of copyright infringement. Orlean wrote the book that they based the wonderful movie Adaptation on, which ironically I think about often when meditating on how I have pivoted into AI. The movie is largely about how changing your life is necessary to survive. It is also about letting your trauma go… which is kind of the opposite to filing a lawsuit.
However, the authors claim that NVIDIA’s AI models have been trained on their copyrighted works without authorisation, potentially affecting their intellectual property and revenue from their creative works.
4. The Intercept Media vs. OpenAI & Microsoft: Copyright Infringement
The Intercept Media has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly using its copyrighted articles and content to train their AI models without proper licensing. The lawsuit focuses on the unauthorised reproduction and use of journalistic content, which is claimed to violate copyright laws and intellectual property rights.
5. Mike Huckabee & Others vs. Meta Platforms: Copyright Infringement
This one involves Meta. Mike Huckabee, along with several others, has sued the social media giant for copyright infringement. The lawsuit claims that Meta’s AI technologies have used the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works without authorisation, infringing on their intellectual property rights.
Honourable mentions:
Author’s Guild vs. OpenAI Copyright Infringement
The Author’s Guild, representing multiple authors, has brought a lawsuit against OpenAI. The complaint alleges that OpenAI’s models have been trained on copyrighted works without proper licensing, potentially impacting the authors’ control over their intellectual property and their financial interests.
A.T. & J.H vs. OpenAI & Microsoft: Privacy Infringement
A.T. and J.H. have filed a privacy infringement lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft, claiming that the companies’ AI models have used personal and private data without consent, thereby violating privacy rights and data protection laws.
It is a good time to be a lawyer!
Updates from our WhatsApp Community
Here are this week’s best links from our beloved WhatsApp Community:
“This Article is AI-Generated: AI Disclosure and Labeling for News Content” from Generative AI in the Newsroom. We talk about this issue a great deal while I’m training newsrooms in AI: if you declare that a piece of content was created with AI can you be sure that your audience will fully appreciate what that means in a world where “AI” has become synonymous with “fake”?
“The day AI clones took over a Swiss radio station” from The Reuters Institute.
“GAI and LLMs in Content Verification: Proceed. With Caution” from DW.
This week’s AI tool for people to use…
It feels like I spend my life weirdly downplaying the magical nature of AI tools and forcing people to remove their rose tinted glasses. However, Cursor is changing my coding life. It takes over Visual Studio Code (where I hammer away coding Python) and adds an AI helper right into your workflow. Up until this point I have been flipping between ChatGPT and Visual Studio, asking the LLM coding questions and then copy and pasting the code into Visual Studio. Now, the AI can “see” the app that I’m coding. We are only a couple of steps away from just talking to the AI and the code materialising.
What AI was used in creating this newsletter?
I used Midjourney to create the image. And it came out incredibly serious, despite me pushing from every angle for a “humorous” take on the topic.
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What is happening at Develop Audio?
For those who don’t know - we have an exciting series called Asylum being released over at Develop Audio. The series goes deep on the state of journalism in South Sudan and is funded by The Pulitzer Center. This is our sister company that produces investigative podcast series and trains journalists in how to create quality audio.
Listen to Asylum on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or YouTube.
What is happening at Develop AI?
We are training. Training. And more training. Get in touch if you would like your organisation or newsroom to benefit from AI training.
See you next week. All the best,
Develop Al is an innovative company that builds AI focused projects, reports on AI and provides training on how to use AI responsibly.
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