AI growth could happen but is hindered by future copyright laws.

In the wake of several Congressional hearings over the past year on AI and intellectual property, Representative Adam Schiff (D-California) has introduced the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act of 2024 (H.R. 7913). The proposed law addresses concerns over lack of transparency in the data sets used to train generative AI models by requiring submission of a notice to the United States Copyright Office regarding all copyright-protected works used to train a particular AI system prior to the release of that system. Although the bill has almost no chance of gaining traction in Congress, it showcases concerns that current U.S. copyright law may not adequately address new generative AI technologies.

Act Particulars

The Act’s notice requirement would apply to those who create or significantly alter “a training dataset,” which the bill defines as “a collection of individual units of material (including a combination of text, images, audio, or other categories of expressive material, as well as annotations describing the material) used to train a generative AI model” and build a generative AI system. The notice would need to include a “sufficiently detailed summary” of any and all copyrighted works—whether registered or not—used in the training dataset or to alter the training dataset. Moreover, if the dataset is publicly-available when the notice is submitted, the notice would need to include the URL where the dataset appears. If a required notice is not submitted pursuant to certain deadlines set forth in the Act, violators would be a subject to a civil penalty of at least $5,000. The Act would take effect within 180 days of enactment, and would require the U.S. Copyright Office to issue implementing regulations within that same timeframe. The Copyright Office would also need to establish a publicly-accessible online database consisting of each notice filed.