CDSA

The Content Delivery & Storage Association (CDSA) explored the legal and moral challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) during the Dec. 5 Content Production Summit.

The speed of the development, training and leveraging of AI is causing many people to raise significant legal and moral questions, according to CDSA.

There are many questions surrounding who owns the rights to the materials which AI engines are being trained on and what is real or fake. As the usage of this technology becomes increasingly pervasive, we need to try to find some answers.

During the panel session “A look at the Legal and Moral Challenges of AI,” Nick Matlach, CDSA executive board member, and Evelynn Glausman, general manager of IoLiberium, provided some perspectives on how to weigh the opportunities and risks.

After being introduced at the start of the session, Matlach joked: “If you couldn’t tell by the gray suit and the fact that I’m billing you by the minute, I’m the attorney here.” And Glausman joked they would be discussing “two of everyone’s favorite subjects: copyright law and art history.”

About 69 percent of the population today is worried about losing their jobs to AI and “I think the previous conversation only exacerbates that,” Matlach said. “But conversely, 64 percent would rather trust a robot than their own manager,” he noted. “And what I think is really funny about that, there’s about 15 percent of the population there which is both worried about losing their job but not worried about their boss losing their job. Maybe that says more about humanity than it should at this point.”

The right to own is “all-encompassing and it usually is the source of the most litigation associated with the right to copyright,” he went on to say.

After explaining the definitions of several key terms in copyright law, he asked rhetorically: “What  can AI do with my art? Well, the only thing that really a lawyer can say [is] it depends. [There are] some cases that are coming up that [are] going to be very important.”

He also noted that several cases had been filed within the past year, since the launch of ChatGPT 3. 5 and “they are all going to be deciding how we understand copyright law within the next five years from now.” He predicted the U. S. Supreme Court will end up making some final decisions on this. “But it will likely take that long before you get definitive answers on what AI can do with the art that’s created by true artists,” he added.

Produced by MESA, the Content Production Summit was presented by Fortinet, and sponsored by Convergent Risks, Friend MTS, Amazon Studios Technology, Indee, NAGRA, EIDR, and Eluv.io, in association with CDSA and the Hollywood IT Society (HITS).