Generative AI's Copyright Controversy Microsoft's Response and Lawsuits

TapTechNews June 29 news, as generative AI gradually attracts attention from all walks of life, some controversial issues have begun to surface. One of the biggest controversies is whether AI companies use copyrighted content to train their models, and some authors, publishers or media companies have filed a series of lawsuits against generative AI companies including Microsoft.

The newly appointed CEO of Microsoft's AI division, Mustafa Suleyman, was interviewed by CNBC on Thursday local time and talked about the issue of generative AI obtaining data from the web. His reply was:

For content that is already publicly available on the web, since the 1990s, the social contract for this content is 'fair use', and anyone can copy, remix, and reproduce this content. This content has always been considered 'freeware', and this is the consensus.

There is also a separate case where when a website, publisher or news agency explicitly states that its content should not be crawled or scraped for any other reason except for indexing it so that others can find it. This is a gray area, and I think it will be gradually resolved in the courts.

However, since last year, many news publishing agencies or authors have sued Microsoft and OpenAI, alleging that their chatbots 'tole' their works to train AI models and violated copyrights. According to previous reports by TapTechNews, the institutions that filed lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI include, but are not limited to, The New York Times and many Pulitzer Prize winners.

Related readings:

'Several news organizations file lawsuits against Microsoft and OpenAI, accusing ChatGPT of infringing copyright'

'More authors file lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft:'stealing' their works to train AI models'

'The New York Times files a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI on copyright grounds'

'Many Pulitzer Prize winners file lawsuits against OpenAI and Microsoft: abusing their works to train large models'

'Due to the use of pirated books to train AI models, Meta, Microsoft and other giants are sued by many American authors'