Could OpenAI be wide open for extreme legal action?
PLUS AI in Serbia & North Macedonia - what is happening?
In today’s news that you can file under “too little, too late”, a New York federal judge on the 21st of November allowed The Intercept’s claim against OpenAI to proceed, where they are alleging that OpenAI were in breach of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as reported by Nieman Reports. The outlet alleges that by removing the information of authors from their articles when training ChatGPT the tech giant was breaking a law from 1998.
There is an irony in that by stripping the bylines from their articles and eating them up to create their AI product, OpenAI may have royally exposed themselves to legal tomfoolery that they may not even have been aware of.
However, Judge Rakoff dismissed The Intercept’s claims that OpenAI knowingly distributed copies of its articles after removing the protected information. And really, this word “knowingly” is what we are going to be contesting in all these cases going forward. If OpenAI have a product that they don’t fully control are they absolved from the tasks it performs?
The Judge also dismissed all claims against Microsoft, who are a major investor in OpenAI. And OpenAI continues to preach that its models are trained on publicly available data and that they have always adhered to fair use principles.
As the Nieman Reports article points out, The Intercept’s case is a novel way for digital news publishers to get a bite of the OpenAI cherry. Stalwart institutions like The New York Times are suing OpenAI with claims of copyright infringement. However, these suits require that relevant works were first registered with the U.S. Copyright Office (USCO). This is frankly absurd and, of course, most digital outlets don’t have their archives registered with the USCO because it would just be too costly. This loophole could leave OpenAI wide open.
The hope is that more outlets come forward and when I saw “more” I mean ALL. If that doesn’t happen then eventually chatting to your LLM will be the only media you will have left.
The case continues…
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What happened at Innovation Days in Belgrade, Serbia?
A huge thanks must go to DW Akademie and Norbert Sinkovic for sending me to the Balkans last month. While I was in the region I consulted with a number of organisations in North Macedonia on their capacity for AI implementation and gave a workshop on AI at a fantastic conference called Innovation Days in Belgrade, Serbia.
3 points from my session “AI in Action” conducted in Serbia
My session was part of an event that aimed to explore the intersection of technology, ethics and innovation in the media. I laid out how AI avatars are moving into the stratosphere. It is becoming increasingly difficult to tell the difference between me on YouTube and me on HeyGen.
We dived into the Global AI Regulation Tracker to see which countries are clamping down on AI.
And we went into how organisations can create their own AI policies. Globally only 54% of AI media policies even mention that sources should be considered and protected when using AI. That is clearly not enough.
3 AI lessons I observed from giving consultations to media organisations in North Macedonia
Rapping to engage the kids. Organisations like VidiVaka are leading the way in AI experimentation in North Macedonia, creating content like AI-generated rap songs in Macedonian that educate younger audiences on events that are happening in the news. VidiVaka are a social media first company and they are finding this sort of attitude of serving their audience with fun, factual content, regardless of if it is AI generated, truly works.
AI can enhance efficiency. For 360 Degrees, an organisation with significant reach through a daily news website and TV show, AI offers real solutions to improve efficiency. By automating simple tasks such as daily weather reports, creating animations for TV, and producing clips for social media, they can expand their digital footprint without overburdening their staff.
AI as a pathway to sustainability. AI presents a critical opportunity for North Macedonia’s media organizations to future-proof their operations. For 360 Degrees, AI could attract more grant funding and diversify revenue streams. For VidiVaka, it could drive scalable production of sponsored content. For Sloboden Pečat, which operates a newspaper, news website and three hours of daily online video content, AI could enable dynamic content creation and unlock new monetisation channels.
We are going to unpack more on how media organisations are implementing AI in the Balkans in upcoming newsletters.
Watch Develop AI on YouTube
We have a new YouTube show called Burn It Down where I break down recent AI news and developments.
The exciting part about the YouTube channel is I will be incorporating as many AI tools into its production as possible. While I have kept the newsletter relatively “pure”, on YouTube I will be experimenting with all the production tools you have heard about (and documenting my efforts in the show notes).
What is happening at Develop AI?
It has been incredibly inspiring for me to consult on a project with the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE) and International Media Support (IMS) to increase the capacity for AI language models in Zimbabwe. The hope is that we can build the knowledge and infrastructure in the country so a range of minority languages can be unlocked with AI. I visited Bulawayo the other week and was blown away with the insights and innovation on display. Zimbabwe is rapidly becoming my third home as in April I’m marrying into a delightful Shona family based in Harare. I’ll be covering how this project of creating language capacity with AI evolves in upcoming newsletters.
Created with Midjourney. This feels like the most unethical picture I’ve ever prompted. People casually scrolling past would probably think this was the workshop I moderated in Zimbabwe. It is not real. Develop AI has been expanding. Now our AI offering doesn’t just include newsrooms, but a range of consulting services for businesses across the world. Check out our revamped site and our new menu of consulting services.
Ethiopia is one of Africa's greatest and most interesting countries. I went there in early November to give a three day workshop with Camilla Bath on responsible AI for The United States Agency for Global Media and Voice Of America. I was there presenting on AI for Radiodays Addis last year (I was hosted by DW Akademie and Fojo and talked to community radio stations on how they could use AI effectively). It was exciting to see how AI in the Ethiopian media has grown so extensively since I was last in the country.
Thank you to the Thomson Reuters Foundation for the chance two weeks ago to teach a selection of prominent journalists from across Africa on the importance of AI. We talked ethics, tools and how to harness AI for the future of news.
See you next week. All the best,
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