This piece originally appeared in Tech Policy Press.
The United States currently boasts many of the world’s leading AI model developers, ranging from established tech giants to emerging startups. But the US risks losing its competitive edge due to its own mistaken policies, which have left the door open for a slew of copyright disputes. With at least 39 active lawsuits targeting AI developers for using copyrighted materials in model training, America’s leadership in AI is under threat.
As with any new technology, disruption can manifest in new social norms, labor market churn, and institutional instability. But this should not dissuade Americans from developing and leveraging a new technology such as AI, particularly because of the potential benefits it could unlock. Copyright law is a form of industrial policy, balancing ownership to incentivize the creation of new creative works while ensuring information is available to the public to spur new innovations and uses. This is the primary reason intellectual property and copyright were enshrined in the US Constitution. To take a step toward that uncertain future, Congress should codify the use of publicly available data for AI training as fair use and kickstart the development of opt-out standards for content creators.
AI development relies on vast datasets to train models capable of diverse applications. Current legal disputes question whether the presence of copyrighted material in training data constitutes infringement. Plaintiffs are asking courts for damages equal to the GDP of some small countries, the scrubbing of public data sets, and even the destruction of AI models. If successful, these lawsuits would create a chilling effect on the US AI industry, rendering many firms insolvent or close to it.
