We must “resist” and affirm that copyright is exclusively “granted to human creators”, argue the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions and associations representing the book industry. These public releases come as the Canadian government holds consultations on generative artificial intelligence (AI) and copyright.
Developments in generative artificial intelligence arouse many fears in cultural circles and pose challenges regarding copyright. Hence the successive outings, Monday, from the Coalition for the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (CDEC) and the Canadian book community, which notably urge the federal government to reserve the protection provided for by the Canadian Copyright Law to works created by human beings and not to extend it to machines.
“The CDEC requests that the Copyright law not be modified to offer new protections to generative AI,” indicates the press release from the organization which represents more than 350,000 creators and professionals as well as nearly 3,000 cultural businesses in the country.
The generative AI targeted by this release is, in summary, a type of artificial intelligence capable of creating content such as texts and images by being trained by the analysis of masses of content – for example, texts literary or pictorial works.
The possibility of creating works of art using AI has existed and sparked controversy for years. A little over five years ago, a French trio called Obvious even pulled off a coup: selling a painting “painted” by artificial intelligence through the prestigious auction house Christie’s. Titled Portrait of Edmond Belamythe work was sold for $570,000 (US$432,000).
Technologies have been refined over the last five years and threaten, fear, the groupings of artists, a space that one might have thought intimately linked to human experience and, by the same token, sheltered from influence of machines. Hence the need to legally affirm, according to them, what until yesterday was considered obvious, that is to say “that copyright is an exclusive right granted to human beings”, as written a coalition of stakeholders in the book industry, including the Union of Quebec Writers and the National Association of Book Publishers.
“The protection of human creativity and originality is ensured by the Copyright law, which requires skill and judgment to obtain copyright in a work, says the book community. This should not be changed to grant copyright protection to AI-generated products or to allow copyrighted works to train models without permission. »
The CDEC also asks “that there be no new exceptions to the Copyright law which would allow technological development companies to use protected works and productions to train generative AI systems (text and data mining). » She also wants “performers’ performances to remain fully protected under the Copyright lawincluding when the interpreted content is generated by AI”.