Protecting customers with generative AI indemnification

How many of these have we seen now?<p>Adobe have offered indemnification for Firefly: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;26&#x2F;adobe-indemnity-clause-designed-to-ease-enterprise-fears-about-ai-generated-art&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;06&#x2F;26&#x2F;adobe-indemnity-clause-des...</a><p>&quot;With Firefly, Adobe will also be offering enterprise customers an IP indemnity, which means that Adobe would protect customers from third party IP claims about Firefly-generated outputs.&quot;<p>Here&#x27;s Microsoft for their Copilot (which I do not think is the same thing as GitHub Copilot): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.microsoft.com&#x2F;on-the-issues&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;copilot-copyright-commitment-ai-legal-concerns&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blogs.microsoft.com&#x2F;on-the-issues&#x2F;2023&#x2F;09&#x2F;07&#x2F;copilot...</a><p>&quot;To address this customer concern, Microsoft is announcing our new Copilot Copyright Commitment. As customers ask whether they can use Microsoft’s Copilot services and the output they generate without worrying about copyright claims, we are providing a straightforward answer: yes, you can, and if you are challenged on copyright grounds, we will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved.&quot;<p>And for GitHub Copilot: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;copilot&#x2F;#faq">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;features&#x2F;copilot&#x2F;#faq</a><p>&quot;What if I’m accused of copyright infringement based on using a GitHub Copilot suggestion?<p>GitHub will defend you as provided in the GitHub Copilot Product Specific Terms.&quot;<p>That links to a document which says this:<p>&quot;If your Agreement provides for the defense of third party claims, that provision will apply to your use of GitHub Copilot, including to the Suggestions you receive. Notwithstanding any other language in your Agreement, any GitHub defense obligations related to your use of GitHub Copilot do not apply if you have not set the Duplicate Detection filtering feature available in GitHub Copilot to its “Block” setting.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t understand the &quot;If your Agreement provides for the defense of third party claims&quot; bit though.

As a legal strategy, could it be these large companies with indemnification clauses want to take these cases on rather than risk smaller companies getting sued without adequate resources and therefore defining a suboptimal precedent?

Adobe, Microsoft and Google have all done this now.<p>Thats ~ 4 trillion dollars of companies betting that the law will say anyone may train an AI model on any public data, and anyone may use the output of that AI without compensating owners of the training data.<p>When 4 trillion dollars is at stake, not only do you put the best lawyers on the case, but you also pay congress to change the law if things aren&#x27;t heading your way.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure now that the debate of AI ownership is a foregone conclusion - nobody owns AI outputs.

&gt;An important note here: you as a customer also have a part to play. For example, this indemnity only applies if you didn’t try to intentionally create or use generated output to infringe the rights of others, and similarly, are using existing and emerging tools, for example to cite sources to help use generated output responsibly.<p>The second part here (after &quot;similarly&quot;) seems like a big asterisk, no? So Google can just duck out if they don&#x27;t think you added enough citations? or you didn&#x27;t ask the AI where every piece of the output is coming from?

Pretty important move to assure commercial adoption. I guess money can be a moat if technology can&#x27;t, with all the open source and small startup alternatives coming out with their own image generators

I take it that this is undergirded by the recent Google &quot;privacy policy&quot; announcement which indicated it claims a right to &quot;scrape everything you post online for AI&quot;:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;google-says-itll-scrape-everything-you-post-online-for-1850601486" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gizmodo.com&#x2F;google-says-itll-scrape-everything-you-p...</a>

&quot;According to Section 102(b) of the Copyright Act of 1976, no “idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery” is eligible for copyright protection.&quot;<p>&quot;Copyright law generally protects the fixation of an idea in a “tangible medium of expression,” not the idea itself, or any processes or principles associated with it.&quot; -- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;strebecklaw.com&#x2F;idea-expression&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;strebecklaw.com&#x2F;idea-expression&#x2F;</a><p>By tokenizing the data an AI bypasses the tangible particular expression that can be copyrighted under the Copyright Act, and takes away just the concepts. On generation, those concepts are converted back into tangible human expression that&#x27;s unlikely to be protected by a copyright.<p>The indemnification means that Google engineers have convinced Google lawyers that this is in fact the case.

A welcome development for consumers of genAI, but unless I am missing something this is bad for artists. Art is not a menial job to be disrupted and eliminated.<p>I am not a lawyer but it does not seem just to me that the creators of the training data should receive no compensation. What happened to &quot;data is the new oil&quot; ??

Google <i>could</i> have made a $500 Million fund to do this indemnification...<p>But instead they have betted their whole company on it - ie. ~$1.5 Trillion<p>That means they&#x27;re really sure.

&quot;At Google Cloud, we put your interests first.&quot;

&quot;we have a ton of money and our lawyers are the best&quot;<p>Also good way to build up the Art230 for AI via precedents

Oh Google. Hope &quot;shared fate&quot; is not a subtle reference to &quot;No Fate&quot; from Terminator. Sarah Connor carves it into a table with a knife after her dream of an AI instigated nuclear war.

&gt; At Google Cloud, we put your interests first.<p>Companies are way too comfortable boldly lying to their customers. If they really put my interests first, they&#x27;d give me their services for free.