AI copyright wars need a market solution - FT中文网
登录×
电子邮件/用户名
密码
记住我
请输入邮箱和密码进行绑定操作:
请输入手机号码,通过短信验证(目前仅支持中国大陆地区的手机号):
请您阅读我们的用户注册协议隐私权保护政策,点击下方按钮即视为您接受。
人工智能

AI copyright wars need a market solution

Data licensing can support a thriving ecosystem for tech firms and creators

For a still nascent technology, generative artificial intelligence already has an impressive resume. It can compose music, summarise wads of legal documents in seconds and generate television adverts based on minimal descriptive input. To become even cleverer, weed out errors and broaden its uses, AI models will need to continuously ingest human-generated content to train on. But the legal framework required to facilitate this symbiosis between man and machine has fallen woefully behind. That puts the long-term development of the technology, and the individuals and companies who feed it with unique data and insights, in harm’s way.

Generative AI models owe their capabilities, so far, to the reams of text, sounds, images and videos posted online. Much of this has been scraped without the consent of the original creators. A lack of clarity over how copyright laws apply to gen-AI training has also fomented protests and litigation battles around the world. Model developers tend to argue that “fair use” exemptions, which allow the use of copyrighted material under specific conditions, for instance by researchers using short, cited excerpts, are applicable. Artists, musicians and the media strongly disagree. They allege that AI companies are breaching their rights to intellectual property protections, since they go beyond merely excerpting their data.

With legal cases ensuing across America and disagreements in Europe over how the EU’s AI Act applies, Britain has taken a welcome initiative to end the ambiguity. Last week it closed a consultation into plans for the future of copyright and AI. But the UK government is also caught between wanting to be attractive for AI companies to scale and drive economic growth, while also protecting its world-class creative industry.

Though Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer last week suggested that plans are not set in stone, the consultation did indicate that the government favours allowing AI firms to use copyrighted work to train their models without consent, unless the owner opted out. That approach would be a mistake. It tilts the playing field against content creators, overturning a default right, which has stood for centuries, that no one should be able to profit from another’s established IP. Though the opt-out mechanism is used in the EU, the systems needed to process and enforce them, across numerous platforms and use cases, are patchy.

Legislators around the world should recognise that building a sustainable and fast-growing gen-AI ecosystem depends on the strength and trust of those that produce the source data. Indeed, enabling tech firms to absorb their content, against their will, to build highly scalable competitors against them, undermines the creative and innovative incentives of individuals and companies in the first place.

There is a better way forward: supporting licensing markets. Remunerated consent between creators and AI companies gives content makers control over their copyright (it is opt-in by design) and compensation for their work, which incentivises their efforts. It also gives AI models sustained access to high-quality data, free from legal wrangling. Many creative businesses, including this newspaper, have already struck individual content licensing deals with AI companies. Moving from ad hoc deals to a broader market for training licenses is the next step. Governments can help by supporting industry-led transparency standards for how training data is used alongside the development of software to process and track licenses.

As it reviews its consultation responses, Britain’s government now has an opportunity to set a global standard for how AI and human creativity can coexist. If it wants to create a competitive environment to attract AI companies that actually endures, developing a free and fair market for data is a win-win solution.

版权声明:本文版权归FT中文网所有,未经允许任何单位或个人不得转载,复制或以任何其他方式使用本文全部或部分,侵权必究。

相关话题

特朗普的阿拉斯加州液化天然气项目未能打动亚洲盟友

日本和韩国抵制美国压力,拒绝将对管道项目的承诺纳入贸易协议。

FT社评:Meta高薪争夺AI人才暗藏隐忧

无论是足球还是股票分析,明星太多都让团队运作变得困难。

乌克兰无人机袭击致索契俄罗斯油库起火

弗拉基米尔•泽连斯基对黑海设施遭远程打击表示欢迎,目前无人机和导弹的交火仍在持续。

我们不能把全球贸易的所有混乱都归咎于特朗普

世界贸易组织的许多体制和程序已经失灵,我们应当承认这一失败。

欧佩克+将石油产量配额上调至两年来最高水平

分析师预测,在该卡特尔取消减产后,原油将在今年年底前出现供应过剩。

中国出口会继续无视特朗普的贸易战吗?

我们可以预期英格兰银行利率制定者会释放哪些信号?美股还能继续上涨吗?
设置字号×
最小
较小
默认
较大
最大
分享×