Nina Brown is the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor of Teaching Excellence at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications. She teaches courses in communications law.
In the battle between copyright owners and generative AI companies, round one went to the AI defendants when two federal courts held that using authors’ works to train large language models (LLMs) constituted a fair use — and was not infringement. This victory was a blow to the authors as well as other copyright owners with similar cases against AI companies. Yet these decisions were arguably good news for journalists.
To understand why, it’s helpful to look at the landscape of copyright claims against generative AI companies. Since their proliferation in 2022, there have been more than 50 copyright lawsuits brought by authors, publishers, artists, news organizations, musicians, and other creators. Copyright law gives owners the exclusive right to copy and control the distribution of their works, and these owners claim the AI defendants have infringed on those rights.
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