Ever since it first made headlines in late 2022, the capabilities of generative artificial intelligence — in swiftly and expertly producing text, art and music — have often felt closer to science fiction than to reality. Yet, even as they have inspired awe, they’ve also caused anxiety, centred on two questions: Could AI ever fully replace humans? And what is owed to those on whose original creations — including articles, novels, paintings, songs and films — AI has been trained to “generate” its own content? These questions are also at the heart of the legal action taken on October 21 by Dow Jones, parent company of The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Post, against startup Perplexity AI, accusing it of “massive amount of illegal copying” from the publications’ copyrighted work. Along with other lawsuits filed over the last year, including against OpenAI and Microsoft, it trains the spotlight on what has come to be one of the most fraught aspects of the AI story, where the new technology is cast not only as a threat to jobs, but to human creativity itself.
This latest chapter in the history of technology is, in a sense, no different from previous ones: Whether it was the printing press, photography or even the internet, anxiety about how a new technology might alter society has long cast a shadow over human ingenuity. Legal action connected to AI could show the way towards addressing such concerns, but they must not be allowed to stifle the growth of a technology that has a huge transformative potential.
The challenge of AI right now is not that it is developing too much, but that it is developing very quickly. The task before stakeholders, including industry and government, is to find a way to keep up and address issues such as copyright and trademark infringement, privacy and data security, and the generation of false information or “hallucinations”. The ongoing lawsuits, and civil society actions, like the recent release of a public statement by writers, actors and other creative professionals and artists — including Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro — highlight these very concerns. They must lead to more dialogue and understanding, not paranoia and doomsday pronouncements.
