The Media Industry’s Race To License Content For AI; Forbes, July 18, 2024

  Bill Rosenblatt, Forbes; The Media Industry’s Race To License Content For AI

"AI content licensing initiatives abound. More and more media companies have reached license agreements with AI companies individually. Several startups have formed to aggregate content into large collections for AI platforms to license in one-stop shopping arrangements known in the jargon as blanket licenses. There are now so many such startups that last month they formed a trade association—the Dataset Providers Alliance—to organize them for advocacy.

Ironically, the growing volume of all this activity could jeopardize its value for copyright owners and AI platforms alike.

It will take years before the panoply of lawsuits yield any degree of clarity in the legal rules for copyright in the AI age; we’re in the second year of what is typically a decade-long process for copyright laws to adapt to disruptive technologies. One reason for copyright owners to organize now to provide licenses for AI is that—as we’ve learned from analogous situations in the past—both courts and Congress will consider is how easy it is for the AI companies to license content properly in determining whether licensing is required."