The European Union is working on regulations that would regulate certain AI systems. These regulations would require transparency regarding the system’s design and information about any copyrighted data used in training their systems. The leadership of OpenAI’s immediate response was to claim that they would have to stop operating in Europe. They backed away from that position quickly, but made it clear that they were deeply concerned about being sued:
In addition to the possible business threat, forcing OpenAI to identify its use of copyrighted data would expose the company to potential lawsuits. Generative AI systems like ChatGPT and DALL-E are trained using large amounts of data scraped from the web, much of it copyright protected. When companies disclose these data sources it leaves them open to legal challenges. OpenAI rival Stability AI, for example, is currently being sued by stock image maker Getty Images for using its copyrighted data to train its AI image generator.
It is very clear that OpeanAI is taking copyrighted material without permission for their training data. Otherwise, they would have no problem with revealing what copyrighted material they are using. If they truly believe their copying is fair use, then they should be eager to establish that precedent once and for all and end the threat hanging over its head once and for all. That they are not is telling. They know that what they are doing is wrong.
I have no grand point to make here, no deep insight. Wrong is wrong, and the OpenAI people, but their actions, have demonstrated that they know what they are doing is wrong. It is the Uber playbook all over again — break the law and grow fast enough to make enforcing the law too uncomfortable for the authorities. And if the little people, the cab drivers and artists and writers, suffer in the process? Well, they are just little people, aren’t they? What matter their lives in the face of progress, right?
Of course, in the grand scheme of things we are all little people to companies large enough to pull off such tricks. But hey, how do our lives compare to the progress of billionaires making even more billions? The people who run OpenAI know the answer to that question.
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