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 Litigation Update:
- A California court partially dismissed the copyright case against OpenAI brought by several authors, including Sarah Silverman. The case against OpenAI made six claims: direct copyright infringement, vicarious copyright infringement, violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unfair competition, negligence, and unjust enrichment. The direct infringement claim was not part of the motion to dismiss. The Court dismissed all claims except the unfair competition claim.
- The same group of authors suing OpenAI for copyright infringement asked a California court to shut down related high-profile lawsuits brought by the New York Times, John Grisham, Jonathan Franzen, and others in New York. They said in a court filing that allowing the “copycat” lawsuits, including the Times’ case and one brought by the Authors Guild, would cause “inconsistent rulings in overlapping class actions” and waste the courts’ time.
- In a Wednesday court filing, music publishers Universal Music, ABKCO, and Concord Music Group told a Tennessee court that Anthropic’s chatbot Claude had been programmed to generate their lyrics. The filing stated, "Anthropic's own training data makes clear that it expected its AI models to respond to requests for Publishers' lyrics . . . . In fact, Anthropic trained its models on prompts such as 'What are the lyrics to American Pie by Don McLean?'"
AI Education Update
- ETS, which runs the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), added AI-powered personalized study recommendations to its TOEFL TestReady platform. Users can get a “customized journey with a recommended timeline for preparation based on learners’ unique needs” for free. Other new paid features include scores for practice tests and feedback on how to improve on specific test questions.
AI Policy Update—Federal
- On Monday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office unveiled new guidelines for people seeking patents for inventions made with the help of artificial intelligence. The guidance provides instructions to examiners and stakeholders on how to determine whether the human contribution to an innovation is significant enough to qualify for a patent when AI also contributed. The USPTO is seeking comments on the inventorship guidance until May 13, 2024.
- At the State of the Net Conference Monday, Congressional AI Caucus Vice Chair Don Beyer (D-Va.) said that bipartisan House leaders have a plan to create an informal AI task force within the month and pass several AI bills in 2024. Among the AI bills the task force would consider is the CREATE AI Act, which would make permanent the pilot National AI Research Resource that provides free access to advanced computing, datasets, AI models and other research tools and services.
- Senators are rallying to protect journalism from the potentially fatal blow of artificial intelligence. They are working to ensure that news organization receive full compensation when algorithms are training using news articles.
AI Policy Update—European Union:
- The European Parliament’s committees on Internal Market Consumer Protection (IMCO) and Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE), endorsed the provisional agreement on the European Union’s proposed Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act), with an overwhelming majority. The next steps in the legislative process are the formal approval of the proposed EU AI Act by the European Parliament in an upcoming plenary session and the final endorsement by the Council of the EU (at the ministry level). Following the committees’ vote, the European Parliament published an updated version of the proposed EU AI Act.
- The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), the European Institutions’ data protection watchdog, published a TechSonar report on Large Language Models (LLMs). The report provides insights on positive and negative impacts of LLMs on the protection of personal data.
AI Policy Update—International:
- Japan’s ruling party will propose that the government introduce a new law regulating generative artificial intelligence technologies within 2024. To address issues surrounding AI such as disinformation and rights infringement, the Liberal Democratic Party’s AI project team will draft preliminary rules for foundation model developers such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
- The Indian Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Som Parkash, issued a statement declaring that India does not need to update its intellectual property laws to adapt to AI because existing laws already cover the use of copyrighted materials to train AI. The statement reads, “The exclusive economic rights of a copyright owner such as the right of reproduction, translation, adaptation etc. granted by the Copyright Act, 1957 obligates the user of Generative AI to obtain permission to use their works for commercial purposes if such use is not covered under the fair dealing exceptions provided under Section 52 of the Copyright Act.”
