How Google’s AI legal protections will change intellectual property and copyright protection

Google is facing a storm of litigation as the implications of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for copyright and privacy rights become clearer.

In the increasingly heated debate, Google has pledged to defend its AI training practices and protect users of its AI products from copyright infringement claims.

However, Google's umbrella of protection covers only seven specified products with generative AI features and clearly sets out Google's Bard search tool. The move, while comforting to some, opens a growing Pandora's box of questions in the field of accountability, copyright protection and AI.

Furthermore, the initiative is not just a reactionary move from Google, but a response to the burgeoning AI industry. It is being considered as a carefully designed strategy to compensate for the landscape.

The legal cloud of AI

The rise of generative AI in the last couple of years has brought the age-old copyright debate back with a modern twist. The bone of contention currently centers around whether the data used to train AI models and the results they generate infringe on proprietary intellectual property (IP) associated with private entities.

In this regard, the accusation against Google consists of only this, and if proven, it could not only cost Google a lot of money, but could also set a precedent that could hinder the development of generative AI as a whole.

Google's legal strategy is carefully designed to build trust among its customers and rests on two main pillars: compensation for training data and results. To clarify, Google has decided to take legal responsibility if the data used to build the AI ​​models faces an IP infringement lawsuit.

Not only that, but the tech giant is also seeking to protect users from claims that text, images or other content created by its services — including Google Docs — don't violate anyone's personal information. Slides and Cloud Vertex AI.

Google has argued that using publicly available data to train AI systems does not amount to theft, invasion of privacy or copyright infringement.

However, this claim is under heavy scrutiny, as several lawsuits allege that Google misuses private and copyrighted data to feed its AI models. One of the proposed class-action lawsuits alleges that Google built its entire AI capabilities on secretly filtered data from millions of internet users.

So the legal battle seems to be more than just a conflict between Google and the aggrieved parties. It underlines a larger ideological conflict: “Who owns the information on the Internet?” And to what extent can this data be used to train AI models, especially when these models produce commercially useful results?”

Artist's view

The dynamic between generative AI and the protection of intellectual property rights is a landscape that appears to be evolving rapidly.

Invincible token artist Amitra Sethi told Cointelegraph that Google's latest announcement is an important and welcome development.

“Google's policy to provide legal protections to users who may face claims of copyright infringement due to AI-generated content reflects a growing awareness of the challenges AI can pose in the creative field.”

However, Sethi believes that it is important to have a misconception about this policy. While it works as a shield against inadvertent infringement, it may not cover all possible situations. In her opinion, the effectiveness of the policy's prevention can be dependent on the specific circumstances of each case.

When an AI-generated piece loosely mirrors an artist's original work, Sethi believes the policy can provide some feedback. But when it comes to “deliberate theft through AI,” the legal landscape can get even murkier. Therefore, she believes that the artists themselves must remain active to ensure full protection of their creative output.

Latest: Game Review: Guild of Immortal Guardians presents mobile dungeon adventures

Sethi said that she had recently copyrighted her unique masterpiece “SoundBYTE” to highlight the importance of artists taking proactive steps to protect their work. “By registering my copyright, I have made a clear legal claim to my creative expressions, which I can easily enforce if my rights are challenged,” she added.

After developments like these, it seems the global artist community is coming together to raise awareness and advocate for clear rules and regulations governing AI-generated content.

Tools like Glaze and Nightshade have also appeared to protect artists' creativity. Glaze applies subtle changes to artwork that, while practically invisible to the human eye, feed incorrect or bad data to AI art generators. Similarly, Nightshade allows artists to add invisible changes to the pixels in their room, thereby “poisoning the data” for AI scrapers.

Industry-wide implications

The narrative is not limited to Google and its product portfolio. Other tech giants like Microsoft and Adobe have gone to great lengths to protect their customers from similar copyright claims.

For example, Microsoft has launched a strong defense strategy to protect users of its generative AI tool, Copilot. The company has strongly defended the legitimacy of CoPilot's training data and the data it generates since its inception.

Adobe has included guidelines in its AI tools to ensure users don't unknowingly step into copyright disputes, and is also providing AI services to deal with any external infringements.

Magazine: Ethereum Resurgence: Blockchain Innovation or Dangerous House of Cards?

The inevitable court cases surrounding AI will undoubtedly shape not only the legal framework, but also the ethical basis on which future AI systems will operate.

Tommy Firqvist, co-founder and chief financial officer of the decentralized social app, told Cointelegraph that it wouldn't be surprising to see more lawsuits of this nature come to the fore in the coming years.

“There will always be someone who accuses someone. There will likely be many potential lawsuits, but some will be legitimate.

Collect this article as an NFT to preserve this in history and show your support for free journalism in the crypto space.