Yesterday, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) announced that it had begun preliminary investigations into Open-AI, the parent company of ChatGPT, concerning a possible violation of data protection regulations. This has made Spain one of several nations, alongside France and Germany, taking action against the company for its use of personal information. Italy, the United States, and China have all expressed the intention to legislate to prevent any potential risks associated with this new technology.
In addition, the AEPD asked the European Data Protection Committee to include the ChatGPT service in the discussions for its ordinal meeting, proposing that global treatments affecting personal rights should receive harmonized and coordinated European action in congruence with the General Data Protection Regulation. This plenary consequently decided to create a working group for the promotion of cooperation and information sharing about the studies conducted by the data protection agencies.
An announcement from the AEPD emphasizes the need for developing and implementing innovative technologies like AI within full respect of existing legislation. This is the only way to ensure technological advancement that safeguards people’s rights and liberties.
However, it appears that some artificial intelligence systems may have been trained on protected content without author consent or financial compensation. Music produced by AI has become a worry for the industry as evidenced by Universal Music Group (UMG) – one of the leading record companies – requesting platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify to impede the training of AIs by arguing that such practice violates song authors’ rights.
UMG is mulling legal action against any company deigning to not comply with the copyrights of artists. For instance, Google’s MusicLM service generates music from text using the intellectual property of hundreds of thousands of hours of audio. As of now, it has not been released due to potential copyright violation.
Likewise, OpenAI’s AI-based Jukebox tool can make music from scratch upon request for a genre, artist, or lyrics. This has prompted a lawsuit from creators against three companies working with digital art (Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney) for neglecting copyright laws. Getty Images has also charged Stability AI 1on at the High Court in London in the same regard.
By taking these measures, Open-AI hopes to ensure that privacy protections, content regulations, and other policies are upheld while still allowing AI-generated works to be produced responsibly.
