Artists, copyright law, and the battle over artificial intelligence

Tech companies have spent billions of dollars this year alone investing in the future of generative artificial intelligence.

Generative AI apps like ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Bard, deliver brand new text, images and code results – of comparable quality to human outputs – from user prompts.

But have you ever wondered how an AI bot knows how to process a user’s request?

It gets trained, using millions of data points – like books, poems, photos, illustrations and song lyrics – from all over the internet, including copyrighted material.

In recent months, several authors have sued companies like Meta and OpenAI, alleging that the companies used their copyrighted works to train their generative AI models, all without permission or compensation.

It’s an issue of concern for many who work creative jobs; from authors, to musicians, voice actors and graphic designers.

What’s to come of the legal battles between creatives and AI companies? What role does copyright law play in shaping the future of artificial intelligence?