Google is expressing its plan to utilize web publishers’ content for enhancing its AI systems. The company suggests that if businesses don’t want their content scraped, they need to opt out, similar to search engine indexing.
Detractors of this approach argue that this opt-out strategy contradicts copyright laws, shifting the responsibility to use copyrighted content from seekers to the copyright holders.
Google presented its strategy in its submission to the Australian government’s consultation on regulating high-risk AI applications. While Australia has been considering banning certain problematic uses of AI like disinformation and discrimination, Google argues that AI developers need broad access to data. This position has sparked discussions about the implications of such a move. Critics stress potential copyright issues and how this approach might affect content usage responsibility.
Google conveyed to Australian policymakers, as reported by The Guardian, that they believe copyright law should facilitate proper and equitable utilization of copyrighted content for AI training purposes. Google highlighted their robots.txt tool, a standardized content crawler, which permits publishers to specify website sections inaccessible to web crawlers. This stance has sparked discussions about the balance between AI advancement and copyright protection.
Here’s What The Experts Are Saying
Experts contend that unauthorized web scraping raises concerns related to copyright and ethics. Publishers, such as News Corp., are engaging in discussions with AI companies to secure compensation for content use. The AFP recently issued an open letter addressing this precise matter.
“Generative AI and large language models are also often trained using proprietary media content, which publishers and others invest large amounts of time and resources to produce,” the letter reads. “In addition to violating copyright law, the resulting impact is to meaningfully reduce media diversity and undermine the financial viability of companies to invest in media coverage, further reducing the public’s access to high-quality and trustworthy information.”
