The recent statements of the head of AI Mustafa Suleiman caused a wave of discussion. In his opinion, everything that is published in the public domain becomes “free software” and can be freely copied and used by anyone.
in an interview with Andrew Ross Sormin from CNBC, Suleiman noted that since the Internet in the 90s appeared in the 90s There were an unspoken agreement that any content in the public domain was an object of conscientious use. He claims that such use implies the possibility of copying, reproducing and processing content.
However, these statements were made against the backdrop of several lawsuits against Microsoft and Openai. Companies are accused of illegal use of online historians protected by copyright to teach their generative models of AI. Suleiman insists on the legality of such actions, but his statements are doubted by many experts.
The fact is that copyright in the USA arises automatically from the moment of creating a work, and additional registration is not required to receive them. The publication on the Internet will not cancel these rights. Moreover, special licenses are required to refuse copyright.
The right to conscientious use is not granted automatically; It is established by the court, which evaluates what exactly is copied, for what purpose, in what volume and whether this will cause damage to the copyright owner. Despite this, many companies working with AI argue that training based on protected content is conscientious use.
Suleiman also spoke about the Robots.txt file, which is used to indicate which bots can scan the site. He believes that if the site or publisher clearly prohibits scanning for other purposes except indexing, then this may become the subject of trials. Nevertheless, Robots.txt is not a legal document and is also often ignored by some companies, including Microsoft partners, such as Openai.
These statements emphasize the complexity and uncertainty in copyright and AI issues, which will probably be decided in the courts in the near future.