Testimony to U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Property

[Matthew Sag] ... Although we are still a long way from the science fiction version of artificial general intelligence that thinks, feels, and refuses to “open the pod bay doors”, recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (“AI”) have captured the public’s imagination and lawmakers’ interest. We now have large language models (“LLMs”) that can pass the bar exam, carry on a conversation on almost any topic, create new music, and new visual art. The principal copyright questions that you as law makers must consider relate to (1) the copyrightability of artifacts made with generative AI; and (2) the legality of using copyrighted works to train machine learning models, without express consent.