US Copyright Office to AI Companies: Fair Use Isn't 'Commercial Use of Vast Troves of Copyrighted Works'

Business Insider tells the story in three bullet points:
- Big Tech companies depend on content made by others to train their AI models.
- Some of those creators say using their work to train AI is copyright infringement.
- The U.S. Copyright Office just published a report that indicates it may agree.

The office released on Friday its latest in a series of reports exploring copyright laws and artificial intelligence. The report addresses whether the copyrighted content AI companies use to train their AI models qualifies under the fair use doctrine. AI companies are probably not going to like what they read...

AI execs argue they haven't violated copyright laws because the training falls under fair use. According to the U.S. Copyright Office's new report, however, it's not that simple. 'Although it is not possible to prejudge the result in any particular case, precedent supports the following general observations,' the office said. 'Various uses of copyrighted works in AI training are likely to be transformative. The extent to which they are fair, however, will depend on what works were used, from what source, for what purpose, and with what controls on the outputs — all of which can affect the market.'

The office made a distinction between AI models for research and commercial AI models. 'When a model is deployed for purposes such as analysis or research — the types of uses that are critical to international competitiveness — the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training,' the office said. 'But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.'


The report says outputs 'substantially similar to copyrighted works in the dataset' are less likely to be considered transformative than when the purpose 'is to deploy it for research, or in a closed system that constrains it to a non-substitutive task.'

Business Insider adds that 'A day after the office released the report, President Donald Trump fired its director, Shira Perlmutter, a spokesperson told Business Insider.'

Read more of this story at Slashdot.