The AI-focused COPIED Act would make removing digital watermarks illegal (as well as training any kind of AI on copyrighted content)
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a new bill to make it easier to authenticate and detect artificial intelligence-generated content and protect journalists and artists from having their work gobbled up by AI models without their permission.
The Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED Act) would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards and guidelines that help prove the origin of content and detect synthetic content, like through watermarking. It also directs the agency to create security measures to prevent tampering and requires AI tools for creative or journalistic content to let users attach information about their origin and prohibit that information from being removed. Under the bill, such content also could not be used to train AI models.
Content owners, including broadcasters, artists, and newspapers, could sue companies they believe used their materials without permission or tampered with authentication markers. State attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission could also enforce the bill, which its backers say prohibits anyone from “removing, disabling, or tampering with content provenance information” outside of an exception for some security research purposes.
(A copy of the bill is in he article, here is the important part imo:
Prohibits the use of “covered content” (digital representations of copyrighted works) with content provenance to either train an AI- /algorithm-based system or create synthetic content without the express, informed consent and adherence to the terms of use of such content, including compensation)
They did it. They're passing the worst version of the AI law. Thats the end for open source AI! If this passes, all AI will be closed source, and only from giant tech companies. Im sure they will find a way to steal your stuff "legally".
To the cheer of so-called progressives who never understood the tech and continue to be wilfully ignorant of it the corporations win again.
This is exactly what OpenAI etc. wanted to achieve with all the “AI safety” bullshit doomer talk. I really hope this doesn’t pass
Did you read the documents? It's not as bad as what you're saying.
It looks like the prohibited acts (section 6) specifically mention for commercial purposes where attribution markers are separated from the content. So, commercial AI software that doesn't retain these markers or copyright marker removal done to mislead or affect in a commercial way would be against the law in 2 years.
I don't see how this affects anything open source related. The way I understand it is that this will just force commercial applications to adapt to this and move on.
oh cool, nevermind then. However, most open source AI is done for commercial purposes, so it will still cripple the ecosystem.
No open source plagiarism machine :(
Dw artbros and other corporation defenders will get curbstomped by the closed-source ones instead, not only will you be out of employment, but you will be unemployable without a ChatGPT subscription, and Altman/Musk/whoever will be worth trillions as a result. But at least it won't be "plagiarism" because the lobbyists will ensure that it's all nice and legal.
And the worst part is you honestly deserve it for not listening to us.
Also, this is you:
Okay, then lets ban art generators, problem solved!
That's also not rational, but at least it's consistent so it's an improvement.
Anyway banning them is impossible, even if one country bans it, all the other countries will still have them - the internet is the whole world, remember? And even then, LLMs would still exist too, and arguably those are far more significant.
"Why ban bad thing if bad country allows bad thing?"
People are saying the same about raising the minimum wage, implementing labor protections, etc. "Okay, advocate for fair wages, but then that minimum wage job of yours will be outsourced to China/India/Vietnam/etc.!"
GenAI isn't a bad thing though.