Barry Diller, chairman of IAC and Expedia, said the current agreement between the Writers Guild of America and the studios doesn’t go far enough to protect copyright holders from being gobbled up by Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The issue surrounds feeding whole copyrighted material (like an entire book) into AI to help the machine learn how to become a better writer. A number of prominent authors have filed suit to protect their work from being fed into the AI machine without “consideration.” Diller says the current agreement doesn’t address this concern properly.
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“Fair use needs to redefined, because what they have done is sucked up everything and that violates the basis of the copyright law,” Diller said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “All we want to do is establish that there is no such thing as fair use for AI, which gives us standing.”
Diller’s complaints came as prominent authors, including George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult, have sued OpenAI for copyright infringement. His remarks also followed on the heels of the Writers Guild of America’s tentative agreement with Hollywood studios to end a nearly 150-day strike.
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“They spent months trying to craft words to protect writers from AI and they ended up with a paragraph that protected nothing from no one,” Diller said.
Diller believes “fair use” would only allow AI to use some of the author’s work.
Diller says Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, believes he’s allowed access to all the work.
Reading between the lines, you get the impression that all the striking writers were interested in AI was not undermining their compensation, even if AI had a hand in writing the screenplay.
Keep in mind that everyone wants money, including these oh-so-prestigious authors who filed a class action suit. So, this is not about stopping AI. This is about using AI as another revenue source, another way to get even richer. When the lawsuit accuses AI of using someone’s work without “consideration,” I think we all know what that means. This is a class action suit, not a cease and desist order.
If AI were truly this big threat, people would try to stop it, not sue it for “consideration.”
But again, who cares? This is a fight between people who hate us. If AI takes over the entire entertainment industry, how does that affect me? How does that affect you? It doesn’t. Can movies and TV shows get any worse? Can pop culture become any more hostile towards us normal people? I don’t think so. Right now, the idea of having a machine take creative control over popular culture seems like it could only be an improvement.
As far as the writers who would lose their jobs if this ever happened… They hate us. They hate you and me. Maybe a little time in the real world will teach them some tolerance and empathy.
I got my big, old Blu-ray collection. Hollywood can burn to the ground for all I care. And I doubt I’m alone in that thinking.
John Nolte’s debut novel Borrowed Time (Bombardier Books) is available today. If you enjoy the book, Amazon reviews help enormously. You can read an exclusive excerpt here.