The Risks of Generative AI: Copyright Risks

Another key risk of Generative AI for businesses concerns intellectual property rights. Generative AI tools have to trawl through huge amounts of data to be "trained." 

If a Generative AI tool has been trained by scraping copyright material without the owner's permission then it could be a breach of copyright. A company could then be sued for using images or materials without a licence.

Getty Images is currently suing the US corporation Stability AI in the London High Court, claiming that it breached Getty Images' copyright by using over 12 million of its pictures illegally to train the corporation's AI tool.

So if you are using an AI tool like that you have to be careful that you are not in breach of copyright. In addition, remember that by and large the outputs of AI don't attract copyright protection, so you will want to look into other ways of protecting outputs you use in your business.

For more information, contact Victor Timon or other members of our Technology Team.