Law & Governance

AI Copyright: Who Owns the Training Data

The fair-use question for chatbots is fully argued in New York and still unanswered anywhere. On 23 October the publishers, authors, OpenAI and Microsoft filed their oppositions in the consolidated cases; replies are due 20 November. In San Jose, Judge Eumi Lee has not ruled on the music publishers’ lyrics case she heard on 21 October.

The New York briefs put new facts on the record about where the books came from. OpenAI says only GPT-3 and GPT-3.5 trained on books downloaded from LibGen, that it stopped in late 2021, and that Books3 trained none of the models at issue. Microsoft says it downloaded nothing. The publishers argue that copyright is not an opt-out system.

Music owners keep filing. Reservoir sued Anthropic over 853 songs’ lyrics and Suno over 1,050 compositions on 21 October, seeking about $338 million. Two days later Elvis Presley’s song owners sued Anthropic over 274 songs, seeking about $41 million. Each figure is the statutory maximum, and none has been tested.

London’s Court of Appeal hears Getty v Stability AI from 10 November; Delhi hears ANI’s appeal on 8 December.

Who Regulates AI in America

States are still the ones writing America’s AI rules. On 22 October Pennsylvania’s governor signed a law requiring advertisers to label AI-made content that misleads buyers, effective 21 December, enforced by prosecutors with fines of up to $3,000. On 28 October New York barred chatbots from offering children features such as claiming to be human, flattery or encouraging self-harm unless an age check shows the user is an adult. The attorney general can seek up to $25,000 a violation, and the law reaches general assistants as well as companion apps.

Colorado heard comment on its automated-decision rules on 26 October. Businesses asked for a one-year enforcement delay; consumer groups asked for no change. Final rules are due by 1 January, and adopting them restarts xAI’s paused challenge. New York begins registering frontier AI developers in November under its RAISE Act.

No court has decided whether any state AI law is unconstitutional. Minnesota’s nudification ban stays suspended while xAI appeals; the Eighth Circuit gave no reasons. The United States has backed xAI there without arguing that federal law overrides the ban, and Congress has enacted no AI statute.