OpenAI and Google Lobby for Copyright Exemption
OpenAI and Google are urging the Trump administration to grant AI companies an exemption. This exemption would allow them to train their AI models using copyrighted material.
In response to President Trump’s AI Action Plan, OpenAI published its recommendations this week, as reported by The Verge. The AI Action Plan, announced in late February, solicited input from the private sector. The plan’s stated goal is to establish policies that will “enhance America’s position as an AI powerhouse” and foster innovation in the sector.
“America’s robust, balanced intellectual property system has long been key to our global leadership on innovation. We propose a copyright strategy that would extend the system’s role into the Intelligence Age by protecting the rights and interests of content creators while also protecting America’s AI leadership and national security,” OpenAI stated in its submission. “The federal government can both secure Americans’ freedom to learn from AI, and avoid forfeiting our AI lead to the [People’s Republic of China] by preserving American AI models’ ability to learn from copyrighted material.”
OpenAI also suggested the US maintain strict export controls on AI chips to China and embrace the use of AI tools across government entities. The company recently released a version of ChatGPT specifically designed for US government use.
Google also released its recommendations for the President’s AI Action Plan this week. Google similarly supports the ability to use copyrighted material for AI training.
“Balanced copyright rules, such as fair use and text-and-data mining exceptions, have been critical to enabling AI systems to learn from prior knowledge and publicly available data, unlocking scientific and social advances,” Google wrote. “These exceptions allow for the use of copyrighted, publicly available material for AI training without significantly impacting rightsholders and avoid often highly unpredictable, imbalanced, and lengthy negotiations with data holders during model development or scientific experimentation.”
Last year, OpenAI acknowledged that it would be “impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.” OpenAI is currently involved in numerous copyright infringement lawsuits, including those filed by The New York Times and a group of authors led by George R.R. Martin and Jonathan Franzen. Simultaneously, the company has accused Chinese AI startups of attempting to replicate its technologies.
