last highlighted date: 2024-10-22
Highlights
- The boss of Microsoft has called for a rethink of copyright laws so that tech giants are able to train artificial intelligence models without risk of infringing intellectual property rights.
- Satya Nadella, chief executive of the technology multinational, praised Japan’s more flexible copyright laws and said that governments need to develop a new legal framework to define “fair use” of material, which allows people in certain situations to use intellectual property without permission.
- Speaking after Microsoft’s launch of virtual employees at an event in London, he compared the situation to that of using information from textbooks to formulate new ideas. “If I read a set of textbooks and I create new knowledge, is that fair use?” he said.
- “What’s copyright?” Nadella asked. “If everything is just copyright then I shouldn’t be reading textbooks and learning because that would be copyright infringement.”
- Nadella, who succeeded Steve Ballmer as Microsoft CEO in 2014, said he was “delighted” by the Japanese approach. Japan has become one of the world’s most AI-friendly countries with broad rights allowing companies to ingest and use copyrighted works for any type of information analysis, including training AI models.
- Similarly, Getty Images, the visual media company, has launched a case against Stability AI, while Universal Music is suing Anthropic.