Overview
Below is this week’s tracker of the latest legal and regulatory developments in the United States and in the EU. Sign up here to ensure you do not miss an update.
AI Intellectual Property Update:
- Thomson Reuters is in talks to license its content to generative AI providers. CEO Steve Hasker stated: “Reuters has had a very open-minded stance in terms of licensing our content to the leading large language model providers. We will have more on that this year.” The company previously said it would invest an additional $100 million per year on generative AI, including by adding AI features to its Westlaw legal research product.
- There were competing views on the copyright status of training data at the World Economic Forum in Davos:
- Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff stated: “All the training data has been stolen” and that “nobody really exactly knows,” what a fair price for this data is, but AI companies should standardize payments to treat content creators fairly.
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated: “There is this belief held by some people that you need all my training data and my training data is so valuable. Actually, that is generally not the case. We do not want to train on the New York Times data, for example.”
- A new initiative called “Fairly Trained” will offer certification for AI companies that use “training data practices that respect creators’ rights.” Founded by former Stability AI executive Ed Newton-Rex, the group will provide “certifications for generative AI companies that get consent for the training data they use.”
- The group will not issue certifications “to models that rely on a ‘fair use’ copyright exception or similar, which is an indicator that rights-holders haven’t given consent for their work to be used in training.”
- Nine generative AI companies have already been certified: Beatoven.AI, Boomy, BRIA AI, Endel, LifeScore, Rightsify, Somms.ai, Soundful, and Tuney.
AI Policy Update—European Union:
- The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) published its AI Strategy. The document provides an introduction covering a definition, typologies, functions, benefits and risks of AI. It continues by articulating a vision supported by goals and objectives and stating the AI principles of the CJEU. In addition, it lists the risks of AI and possible mitigation strategies, and makes a short readiness assessment of the CJEU and the EU institutions. It concludes with a proposal for governance and integrating AI capabilities with the CJEU.
- The European Data Protection Supervisor published a TechSonar report on deepfake detection and its impact on data protection, in light of the evolution that deepfakes have undergone through the use of AI and, in particular, deep learning.
- Luxembourg’s National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) invites organizations to share their comments regarding the development and use of AI-based tools. CNPD will use this input to prepare guidelines for stakeholders to comply with EU privacy and data protection law and to organize workshops, training courses and cycles of AI projects in a “sandbox” context.
- The European Baking Federation (EBF) published a joint industry statement regarding the definition of AI in the EU AI Act. The associations co-signing this statement emphasize the necessity for amending the relevant recital on AI systems, to ensure legal clarity and distinguish between AI and traditional techniques such as credit scoring.
AI Policy Update—International:
- The UK Information Commissioner’s Office has opened a series of consultations on generative AI and data protection. The first consultation is on “the lawful basis for web scraping to train generative AI models.” Specifically, the first inquiry will examine whether web scraping to train generative AI complies with the UK GDPR. Comments in response to this consultation are due on March 1, 2024.
- The British Standards Institution (BSI) and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), will pilot a new UK government initiative with the goal of shaping global technical standards for AI. The initiative plans to create practical tools for businesses, bring the UK’s AI community together through a new online platform, and produce educational materials to help organizations develop and benefit from global standards.
Other AI News:
- Microsoft has launched AI-powered office features for individual consumers. Already available to enterprise clients, the new subscription integrates Copilot with in all Office apps, letting users do things like generate PowerPoint slide decks from a prompt and rephrase paragraphs, generate text, and summarize documents in Word.
- Amazon has introduced the ability to create AI-generated images on Fire TV devices. Powered by Amazon’s Titan Image Generator, users can provide a prompt by speaking into their remote.
- Following its partnership with OpenAI, Politico announced a new feature that will allow customers of its “Pro” product to receive AI-generated summaries of federal legislation.
