Is AI and tools like chatGPT the end of a free internet

Photo by Benjamin Dada on Unsplash

The three artists, Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz, have brought lawsuits against the companies behind the services Stability AI, Mid journey, and Stable Diffusion. The artists claim that the businesses behind these services have infringed upon their copyright by using their works of art, along with the works of "millions of artists," to train their AI tools without obtaining proper permission.

The class action complaint that the attorneys handling the matter on behalf of the artists have also filed against Microsoft, Github, and Open AI, similarly involves the training of AI on code acquired from the internet. The complaint asserts that these companies have also violated the copyright of software developers by allowing AI algorithms to train on open-source code and other programming scripts without obtaining the necessary permissions or licenses.

According to the complaint, Microsoft, Github, and OpenAI are all companies that are involved in the development, distribution or use of AI and machine learning technologies. They are accused of using open-source code, along with other programming scripts, as a source of training data for their AI algorithms without obtaining the necessary licenses or permissions. This, the complaint alleges, constitutes a violation of the copyright of the software developers who created the code.

The complaint also claims that the companies have failed to properly attribute or credit the creators of the code used in the training of their AI tools, and this harms not just the creators of the code but also the wider software development community, by denying recognition and financial benefit to the creators of the code.

As with the lawsuits against Stability AI, Mid journey, and Stable Diffusion, this class action complaint brings attention to the ethical and legal issues surrounding the use of copyrighted material for training AI systems and highlights the importance of obtaining proper permissions and licenses for the use of such material.

If the artist wins this lawsuit it would perhaps make it more difficult for those companies who are using open-source code to build these tools we love, and it could be a restriction on how the internet is used.

And if they don't, could this lead to restrictions on the use of some information on the internet? 

It will be interesting to follow how the progress of this lawsuit will end if it goes so far to a trial.