Below is this week's tracker of the latest AI 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 federal judge, US District Judge William Orrick, explained he was inclined to green-light a copyright lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney and other companies accused of misusing visual artists' work to train their AI-based image generation systems. Judge Orrick said that the ten artists behind the lawsuit had plausibly argued that these companies copied and stored the artists' work on company servers and could be liable for using it without permission.
AI Licensing Update:
- Reddit published its first-ever Public Content Policy last Thursday. The intent of the policy is to explain how Reddit thinks about its user-generated content and to outline boundaries of its use by external platforms for AI and other purposes. The policy states that, "Reddit believes in an open internet, but not the misuse of public content."
AI Policy Update—US:
- On Wednesday, Sen. Schumer and the Bipartisan Senate AI Working
Group released their AI roadmap. The roadmap includes guidance on
"transparency, explainability, intellectual property, and
copyright" and encourages the relevant committees to, among
other things:
- Consider federal policy issues related to the data sets used by AI developers to train their models, including data sets that might contain sensitive personal data or are protected by copyright, and evaluate whether there is a need for transparency requirements.
- Consider developing legislation that incentivizes providers of software products using generative AI and hardware products such as cameras and microphones to provide content provenance information and to consider the need for legislation that requires or incentivizes online platforms to maintain access to that content provenance information. The AI Working Group also encourages online platforms to voluntarily display content provenance information, when available, and to determine how to best display this provenance information by default to end users.
- Review the results of existing and forthcoming reports from the US Copyright Office and the US Patent and Trademark Office on how AI impacts copyright and intellectual property law, and take action as deemed appropriate to ensure the US continues to lead the world on this front.
AI Policy Update—European Union:
- The Council of the EU is expected to adopt the EU AI Act in a meeting that will take place on May 21, 2024. This will mark the official adoption of the EU AI Act. Subsequently, the EU AI Act will be subject to a linguistic review by lawyer-linguists. Its final text will be translated in the 24 official languages of the EU and be published in the Official Journal of the EU (OJ). The EU AI Act will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the OJ and into application 24 months after its entry into force (subject to exception).
- The first information session of the European Commission's AI Pact initiative took place on May 6, 2024. Through the AI Pact, the European Commission seeks the industry's voluntary commitment to the EU AI Act and encourages AI systems providers and deployers to start implementing its requirements ahead of the legal deadline.
- The Spanish Ministry for Economy, Trade and Business published its AI Strategy for 2024 (in Spanish). The strategy is structured around three key pillars aiming to: 1) strengthen capacities for AI development, 2) facilitate the application of AI in the public and private sector, and 3) foster transparent, ethical and humanistic AI.
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