Friday’s Endnotes – 05/12/23

He wrote a book on a rare subject. Then a ChatGPT replica appeared on Amazon. — As this WaPo article suggests, AI may not just devalue content, it may also devalue search, social media, platforms—indeed, the entire web. “The problem, Levin said, is that the wide availability of tools like ChatGPT means more people are producing similarly cheap content, and they’re all competing for the same slots in Google search results or Amazon’s on-site product reviews. So they all have to crank out more and more article pages, each tuned to rank highly for specific search queries, in hopes that a fraction will break through. The result is a deluge of AI-written websites, many of which are never seen by human eyes.”

Let’s Stop Analogizing Human Creators to Machines — “We should be wary of analogizing machine functions to human activity for the simple reason that copyright law (indeed all law) has never been anything but anthropocentric. Although it is difficult to avoid speaking in terms of machines ‘learning’ or ‘creating,’ it is essential that we either constantly remind ourselves that these are weak, inaccurate metaphors, or that a new glossary is needed to describe what certain AIs may be doing in the world of creative production.”

GitHub, Microsoft, OpenAI fail to wriggle out of Copilot copyright lawsuit — One of the current crop of U.S. lawsuits around generative AI closely watched by copyright pundits, which, despite that, and the headline here, does not actually contain a claim for copyright infringement. Rather, it includes adjacent claims for removal of copyright management information among more generalized state and common law claims. Most of which were dismissed with leave to amend by the court this week as reported here.

Generative AI, Copyright and the AI Act — A look at copyright and generative AI issues through the lens of EU law and the proposed AI Act.

Potential Impact on Major Pirate Sites as Vietnam ISPs Face New Responsibilities — Torrentfreak’s Andy Maxwell reports, ” After spending more than 16 years implementing intellectual property laws introduced in 2005, amendments to intellectual property law in Vietnam came into effect on January 1, 2023. At that point, however, implementation was still to be determined so, over the past few months, the government has been drafting decrees. Issued by the government in late April, Decree No. 17/2023/ND-CP offers guidance on various copyright matters related to ISP liability and enforcement measures, including disclosure of customer information. At first blush, it appears to herald a new world of opportunities for rightsholders.”