What are the legal risks of AIGC product development and use?

There are many legal issues related to AIGC, but these three cannot be escaped: **AI technology providers, AI products themselves, and AI users. **

This article focuses on these three, and briefly summarizes the things that need to be paid attention to in terms of intellectual property rights.

LEGAL RISKS OF AI USERS

The purpose of starting a business for an AI service provider is not to generate electricity for AI, but to make money commercially. As a user, the use of AI tools needs to abide by the software’s “User Agreement” or other relevant agreements.

Generally speaking, AI service providers have certain restrictions on the copyright ownership and commercial use rights of AI works. If the user exceeds the scope of authorization of the agreement or improperly uses AI tools, it may constitute infringement. Therefore, before using AI tools, you must Read the “User Agreement” carefully.

For example, the Wenxinyige AI painting tool developed by Baidu clearly stipulates: “It cannot be used for commercial purposes, and the copyright belongs to Baidu.” The solutions of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are to provide users with commercial packages, and advanced users who purchase packages can commercial use.

Lawyer Advice:

1. Develop a good habit of reading the user agreement when registering products, and know the copyright ownership and usable scope of the software created by using AI;
2. If the purpose of using AI product creation is to attract users for commercial purposes, you can become a RMB krypton player, or use CC0 and other products that can be used for commercial purposes to avoid being phished for law enforcement.

Legal risk of AI technology party

AI service providers need to mine and learn from a large amount of data. Although one of the spirits of the Internet is free and shared, this is not a legal reason for free use of other people’s works in the Copyright Law.

If the data and material databases contain copyrighted works of others, the use of these works by the AI technology provider must obtain the permission of the right holder, otherwise it will infringe the rights of reproduction, adaptation, and information network dissemination of the work.

In January 2023, the world-renowned image provider Getty Images sued Stability AI, the developer of the painting tool Stable Diffusion, claiming that it stole millions of images from the website without permission. In addition, three artists filed lawsuits against the painting tool Midjourney and the artist portfolio platform DeviantArt, claiming that these organizations used 5 billion images obtained from the Internet “without the consent of the original authors” to train their artificial intelligence, Violated the rights of “millions of artists”.

Lawyer Advice:

1. AIGC technology providers should pay attention to whether there are works protected by copyright in the database. If so, they should obtain the authorization of the relevant copyright owner, and don’t think that their own crawlers are omnipotent.
2. Regarding the ownership of AIGC’s copyright, you can specify the ownership of AIGC’s copyright in the user agreement or contract, and declare to the user who owns the copyright, although users generally don’t care about it.
3. If someone claims that your work in the database is infringing, it is recommended to take it off the shelf and admit it as soon as possible.

Legal Risks of AI Generated Works

Technology is innocent, but it can be used to commit crimes. The use of technologies such as AI face-changing, voice simulation, and video generation may be used to maliciously generate false information and conduct illegal and criminal acts.

At the same time, the generated AI works also have the risk of intellectual property infringement. In judicial practice, two conditions need to be met to determine copyright infringement: “contact” and “substantial similarity”. First, it needs to be proved that the infringer has had or may have had access to the original work, and there is a possibility of plagiarism; second, it needs to be proved that the infringer’s work is substantially similar to the original work. However, it is very difficult to prove that an AI ever had access to the original, or could have had access to the original.

Lawyer Advice:

1. As an AI technology provider or platform, we must pay attention to the infringement notice claimed by the copyright owner and deal with the infringing works in a timely manner.
2. As an AI technology provider, the user agreement can clearly prohibit users from using AI to produce, publish, and disseminate information that violates laws, regulations, and public order and good customs, and make a disclaimer.
3. Restrict user input and strengthen the review and filtering of generated content through self-built libraries or third-party services. For users who use improperly, measures such as warnings, restriction of functions, suspension of services, and closure of accounts can be taken.