Is the Justice Department Going After AI For Stealing Art?
So the Department of Justice’s chief antitrust enforcer, Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, went to an AI conference hosted by Stanford University and he had a few things to say about AI’s theft of content.
I’m pretty hopeful that this will mean some accountability for AI’s theft of content from creators although it is kinda depressing no one even knows this is happening. All I’ve seen of this is a report from NBC News from three days ago. And it wasn’t even a TV report, just some news article.
Part of me wonders if I’m too biased on this and this isn’t one of those ’Twitter isn’t real life’ things.
And it’s interesting that it’s ultimately the anti-trust head of the DOJ that ultimately takes this on seeing as he sees AI as a threat to creativity to the point he even feels he can make an argument for it being a monopoly.
Monopolizing upstream markets or creative works is monopolization, whether or not a large language model is involved
Specifically, this is related to ‘monopsony, which is when a buyer in a supply chain has so much power that they dramatically push down prices and reduce the incentive to produce.’
And he explicitly linked this to artists
“What incentive will tomorrow’s writers, creators, journalists, thinkers and artists have if AI has the ability to extract their ingenuity without appropriate compensation?” Kanter said. “The people who create and produce these inputs must be properly compensated.”
He’s been going after Google and Apple over antitrust laws and ‘[u]nder his leadership, the DOJ challenged JetBlue Airways’ takeover of Spirit Airlines and halted the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster.’
Going after such diverse and notable companies feels like a good sign to me.
He’s even been in a fight with the FTC trying to see who goes after Microsoft and OpenAI, apparently, Microsoft has put billions into OpenAI and OpenAI in turn uses its vast computing resources while Microsoft incorporates OpenAI into its search engine Bing.
Companies must report most deals for review by federal antitrust regulators, but Microsoft and OpenAI did not. Microsoft maintains it does not exercise any control over OpenAI, which is a limited for-profit company controlled by a nonprofit organization. That lack of control has been called into question following Microsoft’s role in the rehiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman days after he was fired late last year.
The Sam Altman part is what gives me the most pause here given his growing influence in AI and that there were a lot of questions regarding Sam Altman’s return to OpenAI.
Here’s how the New York Times described Microsoft’s intervention in the whole situation
In response, Microsoft — OpenAI’s biggest investor and a major strategic partner — offered to give Altman and his top lieutenant, Greg Brockman, a job running a new A.I. lab. Nearly all of OpenAI’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit and go work for the new Microsoft team, unless the start-up’s board resigned and brought back Altman and Brockman.
That kind of influence on a company that should be independent and non-profit is a problem ESPECIALLY for a growing industry like this, that is part of the even bigger and more powerful tech industry.
I don’t know for sure if Kanter will be able to fix the growing problems with AI stealing from creators or if we may not need greater intervention from Congress with actual laws to regulate the industry.
This does feel like a good start though.
