On March 24, thought leaders in the technology and entertainment industries gathered in Los Angeles and virtually for Creative Commons’ Disruption Conference. The daylong event, which was sponsored by Morrison Foerster, focused on how the rights of content creators are being transformed as generative AI goes mainstream.
Throughout the day, attendees heard from a variety of industry leaders, including Morrison Foerster partner Joseph Gratz, who spoke on copyright issues, and associate Heather Whitney, who participated in a fireside chat with science fiction and fantasy author Ken Liu. One highlight of the event was a keynote speech from Che Chang, OpenAI’s deputy general counsel, who shared his thoughts on the potential economic and societal impacts of generative AI tools. Attendees discussed the fundamental dilemmas of how content creators perceive their relationships with AI and how machine-assisted content can augment creativity.
The following are a couple key takeaways from the discussions:
- Artists’ views on the effects of generative AI tools run the gamut. While there is often a focus on artists’ fear of these tools, many artists (like musician Imogen Heap) use them to enhance their creativity.
- The major copyright questions revolve around three clusters of issues: (1) the use of data to train machine learning models, (2) the generation of outputs that may resemble training data, and (3) the copyrightability of outputs produced by the users of generative AI tools.
The Disruption Conference was a valuable opportunity for members of the technology and entertainment industries to come together to learn from and connect with leaders in the field. With the rapid advances of generative AI, our attorneys will continue to monitor AI trends, engage with industry leaders, and actively seek out opportunities for learning and collaboration.