Q&A: Copyright in the Context of Training Artificial Intelligence
Copyright in the Context of Training Artificial Intelligence
Question
Hello Rabbi,
When creating an artificial intelligence model, it needs to be trained on many examples. For example, an AI model that writes poems needs to receive many examples of poems in order to write poems on its own. Do the owners of those poems have the right to sue the creators of the model on the grounds that their copyright was infringed during the training? That is, the model knows how to produce poems thanks to the poems they wrote. Or perhaps this is how everyone creates—taking examples from others and adding their own twist.
Answer
It is difficult to give a definitive answer here. In my opinion, there is no concrete use here of a specific poem, but rather it is part of a more general experience. It is like a poet who has read many poems in his life and was certainly influenced by them. Can any poet now sue him for copyright, since his ability to write poetry was built with their help?