Showing posts with label AI tech companies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AI tech companies. Show all posts

Saturday, August 9, 2025

News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’; New York Post, August 6, 2025

 Ariel Zilber, New York Post ; News Corp CEO Robert Thomson slams AI firms for stealing copyrighted material like Trump’s ‘Art of the Deal’

"The media executive said the voracious appetite of the AI firms to train their bots on proprietary content without paying for it risks eroding America’s edge over rival nations.

“Much is made of the competition with China, but America’s advantage is ingenuity and creativity, not bits and bytes, not watts but wit,” he said.

“To undermine that comparative advantage by stripping away IP rights is to vandalize our virtuosity.”"

AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified; Ars Technica, August 8, 2025

 ASHLEY BELANGER, Ars Technica ; AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

"AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.

Last week, Anthropic petitioned to appeal the class certification, urging the court to weigh questions that the district court judge, William Alsup, seemingly did not. Alsup allegedly failed to conduct a "rigorous analysis" of the potential class and instead based his judgment on his "50 years" of experience, Anthropic said.

If the appeals court denies the petition, Anthropic argued, the emerging company may be doomed. As Anthropic argued, it now "faces hundreds of billions of dollars in potential damages liability at trial in four months" based on a class certification rushed at "warp speed" that involves "up to seven million potential claimants, whose works span a century of publishing history," each possibly triggering a $150,000 fine.

Confronted with such extreme potential damages, Anthropic may lose its rights to raise valid defenses of its AI training, deciding it would be more prudent to settle, the company argued. And that could set an alarming precedent, considering all the other lawsuits generative AI (GenAI) companies face over training on copyrighted materials, Anthropic argued."

Wednesday, July 30, 2025

Tech giant Palantir helps the US government monitor its citizens. Its CEO wants Silicon Valley to find its moral compass; The Conversation, July 28, 2025

 Professor of Society & Environment, University of Technology Sydney , The Conversation; Tech giant Palantir helps the US government monitor its citizens. Its CEO wants Silicon Valley to find its moral compass

"Critics of those who misuse power tend to be outsiders. So, it’s striking that Alexander Karp, co-founder and CEO of data analytics giant Palantir Technologies, has written a book, with Palantir’s head of corporate affairs Nicholas Zamiska, calling on Silicon Valley to find its moral compass...

Karp has described Palantir’s work as “the finding of hidden things”. The New York Times described its work as sifting “through mountains of data to perceive patterns, including patterns of suspicious or aberrant behavior”.

Palantir has worked closely with United States armed forces and intelligence agencies across Democratic and Republican governments for 14 years. It has been criticised for enabling heightened government surveillance and loss of privacy among US citizens."

European Creators Slam AI Act Implementation, Warn Copyright Protections Are Failing; The Hollywood Reporter; July 30, 2025

  Scott Roxborough, The Hollywood Reporter; European Creators Slam AI Act Implementation, Warn Copyright Protections Are Failing

"The coalition is asking for the European Commission to revisit its implementation of the AI Act to ensure the law ” lives up to its promise to safeguard European intellectual property rights in the age of generative AI.”

Tuesday, July 29, 2025

Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says; Ars Technica, July 28, 2025

ASHLEY BELANGER  , Ars Technica; Meta pirated and seeded porn for years to train AI, lawsuit says

"Porn sites may have blown up Meta's key defense in a copyright fight with book authors who earlier this year said that Meta torrented "at least 81.7 terabytes of data across multiple shadow libraries" to train its AI models.

Meta has defeated most of the authors' claims and claimed there is no proof that Meta ever uploaded pirated data through seeding or leeching on the BitTorrent network used to download training data. But authors still have a chance to prove that Meta may have profited off its massive piracy, and a new lawsuit filed by adult sites last week appears to contain evidence that could help authors win their fight, TorrentFreak reported.

The new lawsuit was filed last Friday in a US district court in California by Strike 3 Holdings—which says it attracts "over 25 million monthly visitors" to sites that serve as "ethical sources" for adult videos that "are famous for redefining adult content with Hollywood style and quality."

After authors revealed Meta's torrenting, Strike 3 Holdings checked its proprietary BitTorrent-tracking tools designed to detect infringement of its videos and alleged that the company found evidence that Meta has been torrenting and seeding its copyrighted content for years—since at least 2018. Some of the IP addresses were clearly registered to Meta, while others appeared to be "hidden," and at least one was linked to a Meta employee, the filing said."

Saturday, July 26, 2025

AI and copyright – the state of play, post the US AI Action Plan; PetaPixel, July 25, 2025

 Chris Middleton , PetaPixel; AI and copyright – the state of play, post the US AI Action Plan


[Kip Currier: This article effectively skewers the ridiculousness and hypocrisy of the assertion of Trump and the wealthiest corporations on the planet that licensing content to fuel AI LLMs is impossible and too onerous. AI companies would never let users make use of their IP without compensation and permission. Yet, these same companies -- and now Trump via his AI Action Plan --  argue that respecting the copyrights of content holders just isn't "doable".] 

[Excerpt]

"The top six most valuable companies on Earth – in history, in fact – are all in AI and tech. Between them, NVIDIA, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta already have a market capitalization of $12.9 trillion, roughly equivalent to the value of China's entire economy in 2017-18; or three times the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the third largest economy today, Germany, and half that of the US.

Spend trillions of dollars on planet-heating, water-guzzling AI data centers to run the likes of OpenAI's frontier models – systems that (in Trump's view) will be powered by coal? No problem. But license some books when you can scrape millions from known pirate sources? Impossible, it seems.

Whether US courts will agree with that absurd position is unknown."

Friday, July 25, 2025

Trump’s Comments Undermine AI Action Plan, Threaten Copyright; Publishers Weekly, July 23, 2025

 Ed Nawotka  , Publishers Weekly; Trump’s Comments Undermine AI Action Plan, Threaten Copyright

"Senate bill proposes 'opt-in' legislation

Trump's comments come on the heels of the introduction, by U.S. senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), of the AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act this past Monday following a hearing last week on AI companies' copyright infringement. The bipartisan legislation aims to hold AI firms liable for using copyrighted works or personal data without acquiring explicit consent to train AI models. It would empower individuals—including writers, artists, and content creators—to sue companies in federal court if their data or copyrighted works are used without consent. It also supports class action lawsuits and advocates for violators to pay robust penalties.

"AI companies are robbing the American people blind while leaving artists, writers, and other creators with zero recourse," said Hawley. "It’s time for Congress to give the American worker their day in court to protect their personal data and creative works. My bipartisan legislation would finally empower working Americans who now find their livelihoods in the crosshairs of Big Tech’s lawlessness."

"This bill embodies a bipartisan consensus that AI safeguards are urgent—because the technology is moving at accelerating speed, and so are dangers to privacy," added Blumenthal. "Enforceable rules can put consumers back in control of their data, and help bar abuses. Tech companies must be held accountable—and liable legally—when they breach consumer privacy, collecting, monetizing or sharing personal information without express consent. Consumers must be given rights and remedies—and legal tools to make them real—not relying on government enforcement alone."

Virginia teachers learn AI tools and ethics at largest statewide workshop; WTVR, July 23, 2025

 

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Donald Trump Is Fairy-Godmothering AI; The Atlantic, July 23, 2025

Matteo Wong , The Atlantic; Donald Trump Is Fairy-Godmothering AI

"In a sense, the action plan is a bet. AI is already changing a number of industries, including software engineering, and a number of scientific disciplines. Should AI end up producing incredible prosperity and new scientific discoveries, then the AI Action Plan may well get America there faster simply by removing any roadblocks and regulations, however sensible, that would slow the companies down. But should the technology prove to be a bubble—AI products remain error-prone, extremely expensive to build, and unproven in many business applications—the Trump administration is more rapidly pushing us toward the bust. Either way, the nation is in Silicon Valley’s hands...

Once the red tape is gone, the Trump administration wants to create a “dynamic, ‘try-first’ culture for AI across American industry.” In other words, build and test out AI products first, and then determine if those products are actually helpful—or if they pose any risks.

Trump gestured toward other concessions to the AI industry in his speech. He specifically targeted intellectual-property laws, arguing that training AI models on copyrighted books and articles does not infringe upon copyright because the chatbots, like people, are simply learning from the content. This has been a major conflict in recent years, with more than 40 related lawsuits filed against AI companies since 2022. (The Atlantic is suing the AI company Cohere, for example.) If courts were to decide that training AI models with copyrighted material is against the law, it would be a major setback for AI companies. In their official recommendations for the AI Action Plan, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google all requested a copyright exception, known as “fair use,” for AI training. Based on his statements, Trump appears to strongly agree with this position, although the AI Action Plan itself does not reference copyright and AI training.

Also sprinkled throughout the AI Action Plan are gestures toward some MAGA priorities. Notably, the policy states that the government will contract with only AI companies whose models are “free from top-down ideological bias”—a reference to Sacks’s crusade against “woke” AI—and that a federal AI-risk-management framework should “eliminate references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” Trump signed a third executive order today that, in his words, will eliminate “woke, Marxist lunacy” from AI models...

Looming over the White House’s AI agenda is the threat of Chinese technology getting ahead. The AI Action Plan repeatedly references the importance of staying ahead of Chinese AI firms, as did the president’s speech: “We will not allow any foreign nation to beat us; our nation will not live in a planet controlled by the algorithms of the adversaries,” Trump declared...

But whatever happens on the international stage, hundreds of millions of Americans will feel more and more of generative AI’s influence—on salaries and schools, air quality and electricity costs, federal services and doctor’s offices. AI companies have been granted a good chunk of their wish list; if anything, the industry is being told that it’s not moving fast enough. Silicon Valley has been given permission to accelerate, and we’re all along for the ride."

Donald Trump Says AI Companies Can’t Be Expected To Pay For All Copyrighted Content Used In Their Training Models: “Not Do-Able”; Deadline, July 23, 2025

Ted JohnsonTom Tapp, Deadline; Donald Trump Says AI Companies Can’t Be Expected To Pay For All Copyrighted Content Used In Their Training Models: “Not Do-Able”

 

[Kip Currier: Don't be fooled by the flimflam rhetoric in Trump's AI Action Plan unveiled yesterday (July 23, 2025). Where Trump's AI Action Plan says “We must ensure that free speech flourishes in the era of AI and that AI procured by the Federal government objectively reflects truth rather than social engineering agendas", it's actually the exact opposite: the Trump plan is censorious and will "cancel out" truth (e.g. on climate science, misinformation and disinformation, etc.) in Orwellian fashion.]


[Excerpt]

"The plan is a contrast to Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, who focused on the government’s role in ensuring that the technology was safe.

The Trump White House plan also recommends updating federal procurement guidelines “to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model (LLM) developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.” Also recommended is revising the National Institute of Standards and Technology AI Risk Management Framework to remove references to misinformation, DEI and climate change.

“We must ensure that free speech flourishes in the era of AI and that AI procured by the Federal government objectively reflects truth rather than social engineering agendas,” the plan says."

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Trump derides copyright and state rules in AI Action Plan launch; Politico, July 23, 2025

MOHAR CHATTERJEE , Politico; Trump derides copyright and state rules in AI Action Plan launch

"President Donald Trump criticized copyright enforcement efforts and state-level AI regulations Wednesday as he launched the White House’s AI Action Plan on a mission to dominate the industry.

In remarks delivered at a “Winning the AI Race” summit hosted by the All-In Podcast and the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, Trump said stringent copyright enforcement was unrealistic for the AI industry and would kneecap U.S. companies trying to compete globally, particularly against China.

“You can’t be expected to have a successful AI program when every single article, book or anything else that you’ve read or studied, you’re supposed to pay for,” he said. “You just can’t do it because it’s not doable. ... China’s not doing it.”

Trump’s comments were a riff as his 28-page AI Action Plan did not wade into copyright and administration officials told reporters the issue should be left to the courts to decide.

Trump also signed three executive orders. One will fast track federal permitting, streamline reviews and “do everything possible to expedite construction of all major AI infrastructure projects,” Trump said. Another expands American exports of AI hardware and software. A third order bans the federal government from procuring AI technology “that has been infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas,” as Trump put it...

Trump echoed tech companies’ complaints about state AI laws creating a patchwork of regulation. “You can’t have one state holding you up,” he said. “We need one common sense federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody.”"

Commentary: A win-win-win path for AI in America; The Post & Courier, July 22, 2025

 Keith Kupferschmid, The Post & Courier; Commentary: A win-win-win path for AI in America

"Contrary to claims that these AI training deals are impossible to make at scale, a robust free market is already emerging in which hundreds (if not thousands) of licensed deals between AI companies and copyright owners have been reached. New research shows it is possible to create fully licensed data sets for AI.

No wonder one federal judge recently called claims that licensing is impractical “ridiculous,” given the billions at stake: “If using copyrighted works to train the models is as necessary as the companies say, they will figure out a way to compensate copyright holders.” Just like AI companies don’t dispute that they have to pay for energy, infrastructure, coding teams and the other inputs their operations require, they need to pay for creative works as well.

America’s example to the world is a free-market economy based on the rule of law, property rights and freedom to contract — so, let the market innovate solutions to these new (but not so new) licensing challenges. Let’s construct a pro-innovation, pro-worker approach that replaces the false choice of the AI alarmists with a positive, pro-America pathway to leadership on AI."

Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Senators Introduce Bill To Restrict AI Companies’ Unauthorized Use Of Copyrighted Works For Training Models; Deadline, July 21, 2025

 Ted Johnson , Deadline; Senators Introduce Bill To Restrict AI Companies’ Unauthorized Use Of Copyrighted Works For Training Models

"Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced legislation on Monday that would restrict AI companies from using copyrighted material in their training models without the consent of the individual owner.

The AI Accountability and Personal Data Protection Act also would allow individuals to sue companies that uses their personal data or copyrighted works without their “express, prior consent.”

The bill addresses a raging debate between tech and content owners, one that has already led to extensive litigation. Companies like OpenAI have argued that the use of copyrighted materials in training models is a fair use, while figures including John Grisham and George R.R. Martin have challenged that notion."

Sunday, July 20, 2025

AI guzzled millions of books without permission. Authors are fighting back.; The Washington Post, July 19, 2025

 , The Washington Post; AI guzzled millions of books without permission. Authors are fighting back.


[Kip Currier: I've written this before on this blog and I'll say it again: technology companies would never allow anyone to freely vacuum up their content and use it without permission or compensation. Period. Full Stop.]


[Excerpt]

"Baldacci is among a group of authors suing OpenAI and Microsoft over the companies’ use of their work to train the AI software behind tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot without permission or payment — one of more than 40 lawsuits against AI companies advancing through the nation’s courts. He and other authors this week appealed to Congress for help standing up to what they see as an assault by Big Tech on their profession and the soul of literature.

They found sympathetic ears at a Senate subcommittee hearing Wednesday, where lawmakers expressed outrage at the technology industry’s practices. Their cause gained further momentum Thursday when a federal judge granted class-action status to another group of authors who allege that the AI firm Anthropic pirated their books.

“I see it as one of the moral issues of our time with respect to technology,” Ralph Eubanks, an author and University of Mississippi professor who is president of the Authors Guild, said in a phone interview. “Sometimes it keeps me up at night.”

Lawsuits have revealed that some AI companies had used legally dubious “torrent” sites to download millions of digitized books without having to pay for them."

Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Can Gen AI and Copyright Coexist?; Harvard Business Review, July 16, 2025

  and , Harvard Business Review ; Can Gen AI and Copyright Coexist?

"We’re experts in the study of digital transformation and have given this issue a lot of thought. We recently served, for example, on a roundtable of 10 economists convened by the U.S. Copyright Office to study the implications of gen AI on copyright policy. We recognize that the two decisions are far from the last word on this topic; both will no doubt be appealed to the Ninth Circuit and then subsequently to the Supreme Court. But in the meantime, we believe there are already many lessons to be learned from these decisions about the implications of gen AI for business—lessons that will be useful for leaders in both the creative industries and gen AI companies."

The Pentagon is throwing $200 million at ‘Grok for Government’ and other AI companies; Task & Purpose, July 14, 2025

 , Task & Purpose; The Pentagon is throwing $200 million at ‘Grok for Government’ and other AI companies

"The Pentagon announced Monday it is going to spend almost $1 billion on “agentic AI workflows” from four “frontier AI” companies, including Elon Musk’s xAI, whose flagship Grok appeared to still be declaring itself “MechaHitler” as late as Monday afternoon.

In a press release, the Defense Department’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office — or CDAO — said it will cut checks of up to $200 million each to tech giants Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and Musk’s xAI to work on:

  • “critical national security challenges;”
  • “joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain;”
  • “DoD use cases.”

The release did not expand on what any of that means or how AI might help. Task & Purpose reached out to the Pentagon for details on what these AI agents may soon be doing and asked specifically if the contracts would include control of live weapons systems or classified information."

Thursday, July 10, 2025

EU's AI code of practice for companies to focus on copyright, safety; Reuters, July 10, 2025

, Reuters ; EU's AI code of practice for companies to focus on copyright, safety

"The European Commission on Thursday unveiled a draft code of practice aimed at helping firms comply with the European Union's artificial intelligence rules and focused on copyright-protected content safeguards and measures to mitigate systemic risks.

Signing up to the code, which was drawn up by 13 independent experts, is voluntary, but companies that decline to do so will not benefit from the legal certainty provided to a signatory.

The code is part of the AI rule book, which will come into effect in a staggered manner and will apply to Google owner Alphabet, Facebook owner Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and other companies."

Microsoft Pledges $4 Billion Toward A.I. Education; The New York Times, July 9, 2025

 , The New York Times; Microsoft Pledges $4 Billion Toward A.I. Education


[Kip Currier: Not one mention of "ethics" or "AI ethics" in this New York Times article.

So, I sent an email to the reporter today (7/10/25):

Dear Natasha Singer,

I was surprised, and actually disconcerted, to not see any mention of "ethics" and "AI ethics" concepts in your article "Microsoft Pledges $4 Billion Toward A.I. Education". Given well-documented concerns of the vital need for ethical guidelines and frameworks vis-a-vis AI by a wide-range of stakeholders (e.g. religious leaders/Rome Call for AI Ethics, the U.N. AI Advisory Body, academics, etc.), I would have expected your reporting to at least have mentioned potential ethical considerations about this Microsoft funding plan, which carries such significant implications for education and societies.

Best wishes,

Kip Currier]

 

[Excerpt]

"Microsoft said on Wednesday that it planned to give more than $4 billion in cash and technology services to train millions of people to use artificial intelligence, amid an intensifying Silicon Valley crusade to embed chatbots into classrooms.

Microsoft, the maker of the Copilot chatbot, said the resources would go to schools, community colleges, technical colleges and nonprofits. The company is also starting a new training program, Microsoft Elevate Academy, to “deliver A.I. education and skilling at scale” and help 20 million people earn certificates in A.I.

“Microsoft will serve as an advocate to ensure that students in every school across the country have access to A.I. education,” Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said in an interview on Sunday.

Microsoft did not immediately specify how much of the more than $4 billion the company planned to dispense as grants and how much of it would be in the form of Microsoft A.I. services and cloud computing credits.

The announcement comes as tech companies are racing to train millions of teachers and students on their new A.I. tools. Even so, researchers say it is too soon to tell whether the classroom chatbots will end up improving educational outcomes or eroding important skills like critical thinking.

On Tuesday, the American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.8 million members, said it was setting up a national A.I. training center for educators, with $23 million in funding from Microsoft and two other chatbot makers, OpenAI and Anthropic."

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Cloudflare Sidesteps Copyright Issues, Blocking AI Scrapers By Default; Forbes, July 2, 2025

 Emma Woollacott , Forbes; Cloudflare Sidesteps Copyright Issues, Blocking AI Scrapers By Default

"IT service management company Cloudflare is striking back on behalf of content creators, blocking AI scrapers by default.

Web scrapers are bots that crawl the internet, collecting and cataloguing content of all types, and are used by AI firms to collect material that can be used to train their models.

Now, though, Cloudflare is allowing website owners to choose if they want AI crawlers to access their content, and decide how the AI companies can use it. They can opt to allow crawlers for certain purposes—search, for example—but block others. AI companies will have to obtain explicit permission from a website before scraping."

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Eminem, AI and me: why artists need new laws in the digital age; The Guardian, July 2, 2025

  , The Guardian; Eminem, AI and me: why artists need new laws in the digital age

"Song lyrics, my publisher informs me, are subject to notoriously strict copyright enforcement and the cost to buy the rights is often astronomical. Fat chance as well, then, of me quoting Eminem to talk about how Lose Yourself seeped into the psyche of a generation when he rapped: “You only get one shot, do not miss your chance to blow, this opportunity comes once in a lifetime.”

Oh would it be different if I were an AI company with a large language model (LLM), though. I could scrape from the complete discography of the National and Eminem, and the lyrics of every other song ever written. Then, when a user prompted something like, “write a rap in the style of Eminem about losing money, and draw inspiration from the National’s Bloodbuzz Ohio”, my word correlation program – with hundreds of millions of paying customers and a market capitalisation worth tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars – could answer:

“I still owe money to the money to the money I owe,

But I spit gold out my throat when I flow,

So go tell the bank they can take what they like

I already gave my soul to the mic.”

And that, according to rulings last month by the US courts, is somehow “fair use” and is perplexingly not copyright infringement at all, despite no royalties having been paid to anyone in the process."