This is my response to Industry Canada’s Consultation on Copyright in the Age of Artificial General Intelligence. The deadline for responses has been extended to Jan. 15, 2024.
Technical Evidence
Question*:
How do businesses and consumers use AI systems
and AI-assisted and AI-generated content in your area of knowledge, work, or
organization?
My response:
In libraries, machine
learning AI in the form of recommender systems ranking results by relevance (like
Netflix) is in widespread use. Generative AI is in earlier stages of
exploration and/or implementation in libraries and information management as a
means of further automating and enriching information resource description and
classification. On the other hand, the tendency of popular AI tools such as
ChatGPT to invent content is raising concerns about spread of mis- and
disinformation, complicating the work of ensuring that the public has access to
high quality, accurate information. In academia, AI is in early stages of use
for the purposes of accelerating research. AI raises both interest and concern
with respect to pedagogy. Noteworthy examples of emerging types of applications
include language learning supports for students, brainstorming, and automated
translation, noting that results to date are best considered as early drafts.
Text and Data Mining
Questions:
If the Government
were to amend the Act to clarify the scope of permissible TDM activities, what
should be its scope and safeguards? What would be the expected impact of such
an exception on your industry and activities?
Should there be any
obligations on AI developers to keep records of or disclose what copyright-protected
content was used in the training of AI systems?
My response:
TDM for discovery
purposes should be legal across all kinds of materials (e.g. to find songs,
films, novels, and stories of interest, not for AGI training). To facilitate the
advances AI is making possible in scientific and non-commercial research, TDM
for training AGI should be legal for these purposes (follow UK / Switzerland
example). One recommended change in copyright law to facilitate AI advances in
Canada is to eliminate Section 41 Technological Protection Measures and
Rights Management Information from the Copyright Act. This section prohibits
circumvention even for purposes that are legal under the Act while it is
unnecessary for purposes that are illegal under the Act. AI developers should
be required to track and disclose materials used for training purposes. Legislation
to this effect at this time would encourage development of efficient automated
processes at an early stage in AI development.
Authorship and
ownership of works created by AI
Questions:
Is the uncertainty
surrounding authorship or ownership of AI-assisted and AI-generated works and
other subject matter impacting the development and adoption of AI technologies?
If so, how?
Should the Government
propose any clarification or modification of the copyright ownership and
authorship regimes in light of AI-assisted or AI-generated works? If so, how?
My response:
Rapid growth of
AI-generated content demonstrates that concerns about authorship and ownership
are not a significant impediment. A Google search for “Amazon ChatGPT
self-publishing” retrieves over 21 million results, with how-to books and
publishing services at the top of the list. ChatGPT can produce a story “in the
style of” a human author such as Margaret Atwood in seconds. This rapid growth raises
two types of concerns 1) for human creators whose works and identity can easily
be used with AI training to create new works to compete with the original
creator and 2) for increasing production and distribution of mis/disinformation
when a tool like ChatGPT (described by AI experts as having a tendency to “hallucinate”)
is used to create nonfiction works without the oversight of human experts.
Comments and suggestions
My response:
Achieving the potential
benefits of AI requires TDM exemptions for scientific and non-commercial research
following the UK / Switzerland example and elimination of Section 41 of the Copyright
Act Technological Protection Measures and Rights Management Information. Most
potential benefits of AI do not involve the use of others’ copyrighted material
– for example, companies and individuals using AI to automate or build on their
own work. Encouraging AI users to make use of the copyrighted work of human
creators raises two concerns, 1) the possibility of training AI using the work
and identity of a human creator to capitalize on their identity and compete
with them in the marketplace, and 2) the possibility of increasing creation of
mis/dis-information in the case of non-fiction works. Concern about AI identity
misuse is broader than traditional copyrighted works, for example use of images
of individuals in pornographic works without their knowledge or consent.
* The consultation includes more questions – I am only including the questions here that I chose to respond to.