The simmering war between the tech and media industries over generative AI just turned serious.
For a technology that raises profound questions about the way things like text, images and music are produced and used, the legal challenges this year have been surprisingly few and far between. Several novelists, journalists and comedians have sued for copyright infringement over claims their work has been used to train the large language models, while Getty Images took on Stability AI over use of its picture library and Anthropic was sued over song lyrics.
Yet most major rights owners have held back, hoping to find ways to share in the spoils from the new technology rather than seek to thwart it. In the only two notable agreements between the tech and media worlds so far, AP allowed its archives to be used to train OpenAI’s models, while Axel Springer, owner of Politico, Die Welt and Business Insider, reached a broader deal with the same company earlier this month.