Experts Say AI Copyright Cases Could Have Negative Impact on Academic Research

Deven Desai and Mark Riedl have seen the signs for a while.

Two years since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, dozens of lawsuits have been filed alleging technology companies have infringed copyright by using published works to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Academic AI research efforts could be significantly hindered if courts rule in the plaintiffs' favor.

Desai and Riedl are Georgia Tech researchers raising awareness about how these court rulings could force academic researchers to construct new AI models with limited training data. The two collaborated on a benchmark academic paper that examines the landscape of the ethical issues surrounding AI and copyright in industry and academic spaces.

“There are scenarios where courts may overreact to having a book corpus on your computer, and you didn’t pay for it,” Riedl said. “If you trained a model for an academic paper, as my students often do, that’s not a problem right now. The courts could deem training is not fair use. That would have huge implications for academia.

“We want academics to be free to do their research without fear of repercussions in the marketplace because they’re not competing in the marketplace,” Riedl said.