Today the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) joined libraries, civil society organizations, and legal experts and scholars in a letter expressing concern to Congress about calls for new copyright restrictions in response to the recent emergence of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
Generative AI has the potential to fulfill the constitutional promise of copyright law, by accelerating the progress of science and useful arts. At the same time, there are calls for amendments to the US Copyright Act that would require permission from rightsholders to access materials to train AI models. Such a permission-based regime would expand the scope of the traditional copyright monopoly; undermine competition in the AI marketplace by imposing financial and logistical burdens that new companies or applications may not be able to bear; and restrict the potential for creators to use AI to develop new works of fiction, video games, software, and more.
As it stands today, US copyright law is broad and flexible enough to accommodate new technology, and to address legitimate concerns of creators. Whether or not an application of generative AI is fair use should be decided by courts, which is the proper forum to apply copyright doctrines to the specific fact patterns that will emerge from the use of AI in the years to come.
Many of the issues that generative AI raises fall outside of the scope of copyright law. For instance, the very real problem of using AI to create deepfakes or political misinformation may be addressed through existing right-of-publicity and trademark law.
The American Library Association (ALA), Authors Alliance, Chamber of Progress, Creative Commons, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Archive, Public Knowledge, R Street Institute, TechFreedom, and Tech:NYC joined the letter, along with individual signers.
About the Association of Research Libraries
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of research libraries in Canada and the US whose vision is to create a trusted, equitable, and inclusive research and learning ecosystem and prepare library leaders to advance this work in strategic partnership with member libraries and other organizations worldwide. ARL’s mission is to empower and advocate for research libraries and archives to shape, influence, and implement institutional, national, and international policy. ARL develops the next generation of leaders and enables strategic cooperation among partner institutions to benefit scholarship and society. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.
