How to Think About Remedies in the Generative AI Copyright Cases

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2024-06-12 00:00:05

The splashiest claims in the 16 (so far) lawsuits charging OpenAI and other developers of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies with copyright-related violations are those that allege that making copies of in-copyright works for purposes of training generative AI models infringes copyright. (Complaints and court decisions thus far are available online.a)

Some commentators are convinced these training data claims are sure winnersb; others are equally sure the use of works to train foundation models is fair use, especially if the datasets consist of digital copies of works found on the open Internet.c (Some lawsuits charge the generative AI models were trained on corpuses of “pirated books,” which may affect the developers’ fair use defenses.d) It may be years before courts decide these and other claims in these lawsuits.

But suppose at least one of the plaintiffs succeeds with training data copyright claims. What happens then? So far, commentators have paid virtually no attention to the remedies being sought in the generative AI copyright complaints. This Legally Speaking column shines a light on them.