If the controversy is that AI steals works in its training, the European Union has the solution: license them

A few weeks ago the Washington Post published this image of the “Panama Project”:

It is a warehouse with hundreds of thousands of books waiting their turn to be scanned and destroyed in the process. It is part of an internal program Anthropic to train its AI and the result of tens of millions of dollars in purchases to digitize all those works without permission from their authors.

They are not the only ones who “they borrow” copyrighted content to train their artificial intelligences and the European Union is clear about something: stop stealing protected content and properly license works to train AI.

And AI companies defend themselves by saying that no one is going to think about small companies.

Europe is clear: if you want to train AI, pay the author

It is curious how the entertainment industry and the regulation of countries shook hands at the beginning of the 2000s with those ads of “you wouldn’t steal a purse. You wouldn’t steal a car. Don’t steal a movie.” They portrayed copying a CD or downloading a movie as if you were breaking into the Pentagon’s systems.

Years later, that same industry turns a deaf ear given what big technology companies are doing to train AI. The Washington Post document states that others such as Meta, Google and OpenAI They had also participated in the race to obtain data in bulk for your models.

There are kicking examples, like the 81.7 TB of copyrighted books that you have downloaded Meta or that OpenAI will use animation from all the studios to train its AI (earning reproaches by Ghigli and more Japanese studies and complaining that Deepseek has looted ChatGPT).

Given the context, it is time to say that the European Parliament has grown tired of this and has one of the things he is best at: legislating. In this case, it makes perfect sense for Europe to take this measure, and the agency issued a report non-binding law that urges the European Commission to develop rules that set minimum standards for these AI companies.

Basically, if they use protected content for their training, they must license it and also compensate the authors. with the title “Protecting creative work with copyright in the age of AI”the European Parliament demands a series of measures apart from licensing the works. They are the following:

• Calls for the transparent and remunerated use of protected content to train generative AI.
• AI vendors are expected to recognize and pay for the copyrighted work they used to train their systems.
• Measures so that owners of works with rights can exclude their protected work from training.

The reason that they argue MEPs is that “generative AI should not operate outside the rule of law. If copyrighted works are used to train artificial intelligence systems, creators have the right to transparency, legal certainty and fair compensation.”

The European Group of Societies of Authors and Composers, or GESAC, points in the same direction. In statements to EuronewsAdriana Moscoso del Prado, general manager of GESAC; assures that “this vote adds to the growing recognition at the EU level of what is at stake. Innovation, equity and cultural sovereignty must go hand in hand.”

AI companies fight back

From the CCIA, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, it was noted that this is not a measure to protect artists, but rather “a compliance tax.” That is, something that must be fulfilled no matter what and that goes against progress. The group argued that such a measure would not go against large companies, but against small ones.

They say that many will have difficulty negotiating complex licensing agreements with major publishers, “holding back Europe’s digital competitiveness on the global stage” and stating that what they would need to do is improve existing laws in the European Union, including the AI ​​Law and the Copyright Directive.

In any case, there is nothing on the table at the moment. As we say, it is a self-initiative report by Parliament and is not binding. The Commission can now consider whether to do so or not, but it makes one thing clear: Parliament’s position on any future AI measures by the Commission.

The problem is that generative AI has already plundered millions of copyrighted works on which it can build its next interactions. The software has tons of information to pivot on and can evolve in other areas, like stopping hallucinating, for example.

And it is another example of the two speeds of this matter: the technological ones taking the first steps and the legislators behind them seeing what can be done when the act they want to legislate on was already carried out years ago.

Images | Washington Post, Anti-Piracy Campaign (edited)

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