Humanity scores landmark AI copyright victory, but faces trial over allegations of copyright infringement
Humanity has won a major victory in the ongoing legal battle over artificial intelligence models and copyright. Other AI copyright lawsuits It involves the US legal system. The court finds it is legal for humanity to train AI tools with copyrighted works, and argues that actions are protected by the doctrine of “fair use” that allows for fraudulent use of copyrighted material under certain conditions.
“The use of the training was a fair use,” said Senior District Judge William Alsup I wrote it With a summary judgment order announced late Monday evening. Under copyright law, one of the main ways in which a court can determine whether it is fair to use copyrighted work without permission is to investigate whether the use is “transformative.” “The technology in question was one of the most transformative things that many of us could see in our lives,” writes Alsup.
“This is the first major ruling in a case of generation AI copyright to address fair use in detail,” said Chris Mammen, managing partner at Womble Bond Dickinson, which focuses on intellectual property law. “Judge Alsup discovered that training LLM is a transformational use, even when there is important memorization. He specifically rejected the argument that what a computer does when training LLM is different from what a human does when reading and remembering.”
The case is a class action lawsuit brought by the author of a book that allegedly used humanity to violate copyright without permission, and was first filed in August 2024 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
Humanity is the first AI company to win this kind of battle, but victory comes with a large asterisk attached. Although Alsup discovered that human training was being used fairly, he determined that the author could be put to trial humanity to make the work pirated.
Humanity eventually moved to training purchased copies of books, but still, first collecting and maintaining a vast library of well-known materials. “Humanity has downloaded more than seven million copies of famous books, paid nothing, and keeps these pirated copies in its library.
“A test will be conducted on the pirated copies and the resulting damages used to create the central library of humanity,” the order concludes.
Humanity did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The plaintiff’s lawyer declined to comment.
Litigation, Bartz v. Humanity It was first submitted a year ago. Humanity sought a summary judgment on fair use issues in February. It is worth noting that ALSUP has far more experience with fair use questions than the average federal judge. Googlev. Oraclea groundbreaking case of technology and copyright that ultimately advanced to the Supreme Court.