American tech giant Google is currently begging the Australian government to let it mine copyrighted content in order to train its artificial intelligence programs.
In a new move, Google, alongside other tech companies, are attempting to make governments relax their copyright laws in order to train AI neural nets such as ChatGPT, Google Bard and more.
A new submission to the Australian government’s copyright enforcement review saw the tech giant confront the government body about the future of artificial intelligence research.
Google suggested that modern copyright laws do not have the “necessary flexibilities” to support modern AI development. In response, the company has asked for AI neural nets to use copyrighted content without restriction to create new materials.
The company argues that AI research in countries such as China will not abide by Western standards. As such, foreign AI programs will be able to replicate copyrighted materials much better than Western versions.
“The lack of such copyright flexibilities means that investment in and development of AI and machine-learning technologies is happening and will continue to happen overseas,” Google argues.
The tech giant argues that Australia risks “only ever being an importer of certain kinds of technologies” if it doesn’t give companies such as Google full access to copyrighted content.
Furthermore, Google argues that Australia needs to clarify its position on whether or not works created with AI can be copy written or not. Recently, the United States ruled that AI content cannot be protected by copyright.
Currently, AI image generation via programs such as Stable Diffusion is filled with images scraped from the internet, allowing it to copy creative works down to the styles and even watermarks used in official works. In fact, popular stock image company Getty has started a fight against image generators that can replicate its style and watermark.
The allowance of copyrighted works to be used within AI tools further exacerbates the issue with generative software. In fact, it will likely also cause problems with hugely litigious companies such as Disney who are infamously protective of their IP.