Ray Seilie spoke to NPR about the recent rulings involving Anthropic and Meta’s AI training practices. In the high-profile San Francisco case against AI company Anthropic, the district judge found its systems’ use of written materials fell under fair use and was “quintessentially transformative.” Similarly, less than two days later, another San Francisco district judge overseeing Meta’s AI legal battle against a group of authors found that the group did not provide enough evidence of market dilution resulting from Meta’s training practices, and Meta’s use of their written works also fell under fair use.
“ These rulings are going to help tech companies and copyright holders to see where judges and courts are likely to go in the future,” Ray tells NPR. “ I think they can be seen as a victory for the AI community writ large because they create a precedent suggesting that AI companies can use legally-obtained material to train their models.”
Ray continues by cautioning that this wasn’t an opening for every AI company to scan all written works with impunity, as there will likely be many appeals in the near future. “ Everything could change,” he concludes.
