Matt Braunel, a partner in Thompson Coburn’s Intellectual Property practice group, was interviewed by Law360 on the use of licensed materials in generative AI and the potential impact of a recent federal court ruling.
In a recent highly anticipated summary judgment ruling, a federal judge weighed in on the fairness of taking copyrighted material to train generative artificial intelligence. The judge concluded that while the technology is “spectacularly” transformative, using pirated material is inexcusable, Law360 reported.
The opinion could encourage content creators and AI developers to enter into more licensing agreements. “If you’re a platform developer, and you have licensed materials that you’re using for training, if this decision becomes a law of the land, you’re going to be able to operate at a much lower risk than if you’re using materials that aren’t licensed,” Matt said.
Matt chairs the firm’s AI Task Force and Innovation Committee and is co-chair of the Intellectual Property & Biotech Law Committee of The Missouri Bar.
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In another article by TheWrap, Matt said that in light of the ruling, cases will now hinge on “how companies acquired [content].”
He explained the Anthropic ruling gives AI companies the green light to be aggressive in how they go about training models on copyrighted material; AI companies will also likely continue to lean on figures, stats and material that is not copyright protected — like Shakespeare and Mickey Mouse — to train their models, he said. Braunel expects that will be the status quo as the case — and the issue of what is fair under fair use law — is contested in court.
“You’re not going to see those flood gates [on deals] open until you get some appellate court decisions on these issues, and eventually the Supreme Court is probably going to have to weigh in,” Matt said. “And I think we’re at least a couple years away from that.”
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