Richard Osman urges writers to ‘have a good go’ at Meta over breaches of copyright; The Guardian, March 25, 2025

 Ella Creamer , The Guardian; Richard Osman urges writers to ‘have a good go’ at Meta over breaches of copyright

"Richard Osman has said that writers will “have a good go” at taking on Meta after it emerged that the company used a notorious database believed to contain pirated books to train artificial intelligence.

“Copyright law is not complicated at all,” the author of The Thursday Murder Club series wrote in a statement on X on Sunday evening. “If you want to use an author’s work you need to ask for permission. If you use it without permission you’re breaking the law. It’s so simple.”

In January, it emerged that Mark Zuckerberg approved his company’s use of The Library Genesis dataset, a “shadow library” that originated in Russia and contains more than 7.5m books. In 2024 a New York federal court ordered LibGen’s anonymous operators to pay a group of publishers $30m (£24m) in damages for copyright infringement. Last week, the Atlantic republished a searchable database of the titles contained in LibGen. In response, authors and writers’ organisations have rallied against Meta’s use of copyrighted works."

Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo and More Than 400 Hollywood Names Urge Trump to Not Let AI Companies ‘Exploit’ Copyrighted Works; Variety, March 17, 2025

 Todd Spangler , Variety; Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo and More Than 400 Hollywood Names Urge Trump to Not Let AI Companies ‘Exploit’ Copyrighted Works

"More than 400 Hollywood creative leaders signed an open letter to the Trump White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy, urging the administration to not roll back copyright protections at the behest of AI companies.

The filmmakers, writers, actors, musicians and others — which included Ben Stiller, Mark Ruffalo, Cynthia Erivo, Cate Blanchett, Cord Jefferson, Paul McCartney, Ron Howard and Taika Waititi — were submitting comments for the Trump administration’s U.S. AI Action Plan⁠. The letter specifically was penned in response to recent submissions to the Office of Science and Technology Policy from OpenAI and Google, which asserted that U.S. copyright law allows (or should allow) allow AI companies to train their system on copyrighted works without obtaining permission from (or compensating) rights holders."

Should AI be treated the same way as people are when it comes to copyright law? ; The Hill, March 24, 2025

  NICHOLAS CREEL, The Hill ; Should AI be treated the same way as people are when it comes to copyright law? 

"The New York Times’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft highlights an uncomfortable contradiction in how we view creativity and learning. While the Times accuses these companies of copyright infringement for training AI on their content, this ignores a fundamental truth: AI systems learn exactly as humans do, by absorbing, synthesizing and transforming existing knowledge into something new."

AI firms push to use copyrighted content freely; Axios, March 20, 2025

 Ina Fried, Axios; AI firms push to use copyrighted content freely

"A sharp divide over AI engines' free use of copyrighted material has emerged as a key conflict among the firms and groups that recently flooded the White House with advice on its forthcoming "AI Action Plan."

Why it matters: Copyright infringement claims were among the first legal challenges following ChatGPT's launch, with multiple lawsuits now winding their way through the courts.

Driving the news: In their White House memos, OpenAI and Google argue that their  use of copyrighted material for AI is a matter of national security — and if that use is limited, China will gain an unfair edge in the AI race."

The AI Copyright Battle: Why OpenAI And Google Are Pushing For Fair Use; Forbes, March 15, 2025

 Virginie Berger , Forbes; The AI Copyright Battle: Why OpenAI And Google Are Pushing For Fair Use

"Furthermore, the ongoing lawsuits against AI firms could serve as a necessary correction to push the industry toward genuinely intelligent machine learning models instead of data-compression-based generators masquerading as intelligence. If legal challenges force AI firms to rethink their reliance on copyrighted content, it could spur innovation toward creating more advanced, ethically sourced AI systems...

Recommendations: Finding a Sustainable Balance

A sustainable solution must reconcile technological innovation with creators' economic interests. Policymakers should develop clear federal standards specifying fair use parameters for AI training, considering solutions such as:

• Licensing and Royalties: Transparent licensing arrangements compensating creators whose work is integral to AI datasets.
• Curated Datasets: Government or industry-managed datasets explicitly approved for AI training, ensuring fair compensation.
• Regulated Exceptions: Clear legal definitions distinguishing transformative use in AI training contexts.

These nuanced policies could encourage innovation without sacrificing creators’ rights.

The lobbying by OpenAI and Google reveals broader tensions between rapid technological growth and ethical accountability. While national security concerns warrant careful consideration, they must not justify irresponsible regulation or ethical compromises. A balanced approach, preserving innovation, protecting creators’ rights, and ensuring sustainable and ethical AI development, is critical for future global competitiveness and societal fairness."

OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use; Ars Technica, March 13, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER  , Ars Technica; OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use

"OpenAI is hoping that Donald Trump's AI Action Plan, due out this July, will settle copyright debates by declaring AI training fair use—paving the way for AI companies' unfettered access to training data that OpenAI claims is critical to defeat China in the AI race.

Currently, courts are mulling whether AI training is fair use, as rights holders say that AI models trained on creative works threaten to replace them in markets and water down humanity's creative output overall.

OpenAI is just one AI company fighting with rights holders in several dozen lawsuits, arguing that AI transforms copyrighted works it trains on and alleging that AI outputs aren't substitutes for original works.

So far, one landmark ruling favored rights holders, with a judge declaring AI training is not fair use, as AI outputs clearly threatened to replace Thomson-Reuters' legal research firm Westlaw in the market, Wired reported. But OpenAI now appears to be looking to Trump to avoid a similar outcome in its lawsuits, including a major suit brought by The New York Times."

Prioritise artists over tech in AI copyright debate, MPs say; The Guardian, February 26, 2025

 Rachel Hall, The Guardian; Prioritise artists over tech in AI copyright debate, MPs say

"Two cross-party committees of MPs have urged the government to prioritise ensuring that creators are fairly remunerated for their creative work over making it easy to train artificial intelligence models.

The MPs argued there needed to be more transparency around the vast amounts of data used to train generative AI models, and urged the government not to press ahead with plans to require creators to opt out of having their data used.

The government’s preferred solution to the tension between AI and copyright law is to allow AI companies to train the models on copyrighted work by giving them an exception for “text and data mining”, while giving creatives the opportunity to opt out through a “rights reservation” system.

The chair of the culture, media and sport committee, Caroline Dinenage, said there had been a “groundswell of concern from across the creative industries” in response to the proposals, which “illustrates the scale of the threat artists face from artificial intelligence pilfering the fruits of their hard-earned success without permission”.

She added that making creative works “fair game unless creators say so” was akin to “burglars being allowed into your house unless there’s a big sign on your front door expressly telling them that thievery isn’t allowed”."

UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans; Independent, February 25, 2025

 Martyn Landi, Independent; UK newspapers launch campaign against AI copyright plans

"Some of the UK’s biggest newspapers have used a coordinated campaign across their front pages to raise their concerns about AI’s impact on the creative industries.

Special wraps appeared on Tuesday’s editions of the Daily Express, Daily Mail, The Mirror, the Daily Star, The i, The Sun, and The Times – as well as a number of regional titles – criticising a Government consultation around possible exemptions being added to copyright law for training AI models.

The proposals would allow tech firms to use copyrighted material from creatives and publishers without having to pay or gain a licence, or reimbursing creatives for using their work."

Musicians release silent album to protest UK's AI copyright changes; Reuters, February 25, 2025

Sam Tabahriti, Reuters; Musicians release silent album to protest UK's AI copyright changes

"More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush and Cat Stevens, on Tuesday released a silent album to protest proposed changes to Britain's copyright laws, which could allow tech firms to train artificial intelligence models using their work."

Copyright 'sell-out' will silence British musicians, says BRIAN MAY; Daily Mail, February 23, 2025

 Andy Behring , Daily Mail; Copyright 'sell-out' will silence British musicians, says BRIAN MAY

"No one will make music in Britain any more if Labour's AI copyright proposal succeeds, Sir Brian May warned last night as he backed the Daily Mail's campaign against it.

The Queen guitarist said he feared it may already be 'too late' because 'monstrously arrogant' Big Tech barons have already carried out an industrial-scale 'theft' of Britain's cultural genius.

He called on the Government to apply the brakes before the next chapter of Britain's rich cultural heritage – which includes Shakespeare, Chaucer, James Bond, The Beatles and Britpop – is nipped in the bud thanks to Sir Keir Starmer's copyright 'sell-out'...

Sir Brian said: 'My fear is that it's already too late – this theft has already been performed and is unstoppable, like so many incursions that the monstrously arrogant billionaire owners of Al and social media are making into our lives. The future is already forever changed."

AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), February 19, 2025

 TORI NOBLE, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead

[Kip Currier: No, not everyone. Not requiring Big Tech to figure out a way to fairly license or get permission to use the copyrighted works of creators unjustly advantages these deep pocketed corporations. It also inequitably disadvantages the economic and creative interests of the human beings who labor to create copyrightable content -- authors, songwriters, visual artists, and many others.

The tell is that many of these same Big Tech companies are only too willing to file copyright infringement lawsuits against anyone whom they allege is infringing their AI content to create competing products and services.]

[Excerpt]

"Threats to Socially Valuable Research and Innovation 

Requiring researchers to license fair uses of AI training data could make socially valuable research based on machine learning (ML) and even text and data mining (TDM) prohibitively complicated and expensive, if not impossible. Researchers have relied on fair use to conduct TDM research for a decade, leading to important advancements in myriad fields. However, licensing the vast quantity of works that high-quality TDM research requires is frequently cost-prohibitive and practically infeasible.  

Fair use protects ML and TDM research for good reason. Without fair use, copyright would hinder important scientific advancements that benefit all of us. Empirical studies back this up: research using TDM methodologies are more common in countries that protect TDM research from copyright control; in countries that don’t, copyright restrictions stymie beneficial research. It’s easy to see why: it would be impossible to identify and negotiate with millions of different copyright owners to analyze, say, text from the internet."

AI companies flaunt their theft. News media has to fight back – so we're suing. | Opinion; USA Today, February 13, 2025

Danielle Coffey, USA Today; AI companies flaunt their theft. News media has to fight back – so we're suing. | Opinion

"Danielle Coffey is president & CEO of the News/Media Alliance, which represents 2,000 news and magazine media outlets worldwide...

This is not an anti-AI lawsuit or an effort to turn back the clock. We love technology. We use it in our businesses. Artificial intelligence will help us better serve our customers, but only if it respects intellectual property. That’s the remedy we’re seeking in court.

When it suits them, the AI companies assert similar claims to ours. Meta's lawsuit accused Bright Data of scraping data in violation of its terms of use. And Sam Altman of OpenAI has complained that DeepSeek illegally copied its algorithms.

Good actors, responsible technologies and potential legislation offer some hope for improving the situation. But what is urgently needed is what every market needs: reinforcement of legal protections against theft."

Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations; Tom's Hardware, February 9, 2025

 

Jowi Morales

 , Tom's Hardware; Meta staff torrented nearly 82TB of pirated books for AI training — court records reveal copyright violations

"Facebook parent-company Meta is currently fighting a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement and unfair competition, among others, with regards to how it trained LLaMA. According to an X (formerly Twitter) post by vx-underground, court records reveal that the social media company used pirated torrents to download 81.7TB of data from shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Z-Library, and LibGen. It then used this information to train its AI models.

The evidence, in the form of written communication, shows the researchers’ concerns about Meta’s use of pirated materials. One senior AI researcher said way back in October 2022, “I don’t think we should use pirated material. I really need to draw a line here.” While another one said, “Using pirated material should be beyond our ethical threshold,” then they added, “SciHub, ResearchGate, LibGen are basically like PirateBay or something like that, they are distributing content that is protected by copyright and they’re infringing it.”"

Elton John backs Paul McCartney in criticising proposed overhaul to UK copyright system; The Guardian, January 27, 2025

 Laura Snapes, The Guardian ; Elton John backs Paul McCartney in criticising proposed overhaul to UK copyright system

"Elton John has backed Paul McCartney in criticising a proposed overhaul of the UK copyright system, and has called for new rules to prevent tech companies from riding “roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods”.

John has backed proposed amendments to the data (use and access) bill that would extend existing copyright protections, when it goes before a vote in the House of Lords on Tuesday.

The government is also consulting on an overhaul of copyright laws that would result in artists having to opt out of letting AI companies train their models using their work, rather than an opt-in model...

John told the Sunday Times that he felt “wheels are in motion to allow AI companies to ride roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods. This will allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music. This will dilute and threaten young artists’ earnings even further. The musician community rejects it wholeheartedly.”

He said that “challenging financial situations” and increased touring costs made it “harder than ever for new and emerging musicians to make the finances of the industry stack up to sustain a fledgling career”, and added that the UK’s place on the world stage as “a leader in arts and popular culture is under serious jeopardy” without robust copyright protection.

“It is the absolute bedrock of artistic prosperity, and the country’s future success in the creative industries depends on it.”

The government consultation runs until 25 February and will explore how to improve trust between the creative and AI sectors, and how creators can license and get paid for use of their material."

AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped; Financial Times, December 21, 2024

 Kate Mosse, Financial Times; AI's assault on our intellectual property must be stopped

"Imagine my dismay, therefore, to discover that those 15 years of dreaming, researching, planning, writing, rewriting, editing, visiting libraries and archives, translating Occitan texts, hunting down original 13th-century documents, becoming an expert in Catharsis, apparently counts for nothing. Labyrinth is just one of several of my novels that have been scraped by Meta's large language model. This has been done without my consent, without remuneration, without even notification. This is theft...

AI companies present creators as being against change. We are  not. Every artist I know is already engaging with AI in one way or another. But a distinction needs to be made between AI that can be used in brilliant ways -- for example, medical diagnosis -- and the foundations of AI models, where companies are essentially stealing creatives' work for their own profit. We should not forget that the AI companies rely on creators to build their models. Without strong copyright law that ensures creators can earn a living, AI companies will lack the high-quality material that is essential for their future growth."

Tech companies face tough AI copyright questions in 2025; Reuters, December 27, 2024

 Blake Brittain, Reuters ; Tech companies face tough AI copyright questions in 2025

"The new year may bring pivotal developments in a series of copyright lawsuits that could shape the future business of artificial intelligence.

The lawsuits from authors, news outlets, visual artists, musicians and other copyright owners accuse OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta Platforms and other technology companies of using their work to train chatbots and other AI-based content generators without permission or payment.

Courts will likely begin hearing arguments starting next year on whether the defendants' copying amounts to "fair use," which could be the AI copyright war's defining legal question."

Google CEO: AI development is finally slowing down—‘the low-hanging fruit is gone’; CNBC, December 8, 2024

 Megan Sauer , CNBC; Google CEO: AI development is finally slowing down—‘the low-hanging fruit is gone’;

"Now, with the industry’s competitive landscape somewhat established — multiple big tech companies, including Google, have competing models — it’ll take time for another technological breakthrough to shock the AI industry into hyper-speed development again, Pichai said at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last week.

“I think the progress is going to get harder. When I look at [2025], the low-hanging fruit is gone,” said Pichai, adding: “The hill is steeper ... You’re definitely going to need deeper breakthroughs as we get to the next stage.”...

Some tech CEOs, like Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, agree with Pichai. “Seventy years of the Industrial Revolution, there wasn’t much industry growth, and then it took off ... it’s never going to be linear,” Nadella saidat the Fast Company Innovation Festival 2024 in October.

Others disagree, at least publicly. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, for example, posted “there is no wall” on social media platform X in November — a response to reports that the recently released ChatGPT-4 was only moderately better than previous models."

Getty Images CEO Calls AI Training Models ‘Pure Theft’; PetaPixel, December 3, 2024

 MATT GROWCOOT , PetaPixel; Getty Images CEO Calls AI Training Models ‘Pure Theft’

"The CEO of Getty Images has penned a column in which he calls the practice of scraping photos and other content from the open web by AI companies “pure theft”.

Writing for Fortune, Craig Peters argues that fair use rules must be respected and that AI training practices are in contravention of those rules...

“I am responsible for an organization that employs over 1,700 individuals and represents the work of more than 600,000 journalists and creators worldwide,” writes Peters. “Copyright is at the very core of our business and the livelihood of those we employ and represent.”"

What AI knows about you; Axios, November 4, 2024

Ina Friend, Axios; What AI knows about you

"Most AI builders don't say where they are getting the data they use to train their bots and models — but legally they're required to say what they are doing with their customers' data.

The big picture: These data-use disclosures open a window onto the otherwise opaque world of Big Tech's AI brain-food fight.

• In this new Axios series, we'll tell you, company by company, what all the key players are saying and doing with your personal information and content.

Why it matters: You might be just fine knowing that picture you just posted on Instagram is helping train the next generative AI art engine. But you might not — or you might just want to be choosier about what you share.

Zoom out: AI makers need an incomprehensibly gigantic amount of raw data to train their large language and image models. 

• The industry's hunger has led to a data land grab: Companies are vying to teach their baby AIs using information sucked in from many different sources — sometimes with the owner's permission, often without it — before new laws and court rulings make that harder. 

Zoom in: Each Big Tech giant is building generative AI models, and many of them are using their customer data, in part, to train them.

• In some cases it's opt-in, meaning your data won't be used unless you agree to it. In other cases it is opt-out, meaning your information will automatically get used unless you explicitly say no. 
• These rules can vary by region, thanks to legal differences. For instance, Meta's Facebook and Instagram are "opt-out" — but you can only opt out if you live in Europe or Brazil.
• In the U.S., California's data privacy law is among the laws responsible for requiring firms to say what they do with user data. In the EU, it's the GDPR."

Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff; The Bookseller, October 18, 2024

  MATILDA BATTERSBY, The Bookseller; Penguin Random House underscores copyright protection in AI rebuff

"The world’s biggest trade publisher has changed the wording on its copyright pages to help protect authors’ intellectual property from being used to train large language models (LLMs) and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools, The Bookseller can exclusively reveal.

Penguin Random House (PRH) has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally, confirming it will appear “in imprint pages across our markets”. The new wording states: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems”, and will be included in all new titles and any backlist titles that are reprinted.

The statement also “expressly reserves [the titles] from the text and data mining exception”, in accordance with a European Parliament directive.

The move specifically to ban the use of its titles by AI firms for the development of chatbots and other digital tools comes amid a slew of copyright infringement cases in the US and reports that large tranches of pirated books have already been used by tech companies to train AI tools. In 2024, several academic publishers including Taylor & Francis, Wiley and Sage have announced partnerships to license content to AI firms.

PRH is believed to be the first of the Big Five anglophone trade publishers to amend its copyright information to reflect the acceleration of AI systems and the alleged reliance by tech companies on using published work to train language models."