The US Copyright Chief Was Fired After Raising Red Flags About AI Abuse

On Friday, the US Copyright Office released a draft of a report finding that AI companies broke the law while training AI. The next day, the agency's head, Shira Perlmutter, was fired — and the alarm bells are blaring. The report's findings were pretty straightforward. Basically, the report explained that using large language models (LLMs) trained on copyrighted data for tasks like "research and analysis" is probably fine, as "the outputs are unlikely to substitute for expressive works used in training." But that changes when copyrighted materials (like books, for example) are used for commercial applications — particularly when those applications compete in the same market as the original works funneled into models for training. Other examples: Using an AI that gets trained on copyrighted journalism, in order to create a news generation tool, or using copyrighted artworks, in order to then create art to sell. That type of use likely breaches fair use protections, according to the rep ... Read full article.