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A bipartisan group of senators this week introduced a bill intended to protect artists and journalists from having their work used to train AI models or to generate AI content without their consent.The Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED Act) would require the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create guidelines and standards for adding watermark-like details about where AI content originated and make it illegal to remove, disable, or tamper with this “content provenance” information.The bill would also allow individuals to sue for violations and authorize the FTC and state attorneys general to enforce its requirements.”Artificial intelligence has given bad actors the ability to create deepfakes of every individual, including those in the creative community, to imitate their likeness without their consent and profit off of counterfeit content,” says bill co-sponsor Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican. “The COPIED Act takes an important step to better defend common targets like artists and performers against deepfakes and other inauthentic content.” The COPIED Act “will provide much-needed transparency around AI-generated content [and] put creators, including local journalists, artists, and musicians, back in control of their content with a provenance and watermark process that I think is very much needed,” adds Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat.Artists, authors, and publishers are already waging legal battles against AI companies, most notably The New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. Last year, Google was also sued for scraping the internet for data to train its Gemini AI.Some publishers have signed deals with AI companies for permission to use their data, which may be a more lucrative option than going up against billion-dollar tech companies. In the music world, YouTube is reportedly in talks with record labels about using specific artists’ catalogs to train its upcoming AI tools.There’s also the issue of deepfakes using an artist’s likeness without their permission to push shady crypto schemes and even porn.
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Several groups have endorsed the COPIED Act, including the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). “Leading tech companies refuse to share basic data about the creation and training of their models as they profit from copying and using unlicensed copyrighted material to generate synthetic recordings that unfairly compete with original works,” says Mitch Glazier, Chairman and CEO of the RIAA.The bill “would grant much needed visibility into AI development and pave the way for more ethical innovation and fair and transparent competition in the digital marketplace,” Glazier adds.Other backers include SAG-AFTRA, Nashville Songwriters Association International, Recording Academy, National Music Publishers’ Association, News/Media Alliance, National Newspaper Association, America’s Newspapers, Rebuild Local News, Seattle Times, National Association of Broadcasters, Artist Rights Alliance, Human Artistry Campaign, Public Citizen, The Society of Composers & Lyricists, Songwriters Guild of America, and Music Creators North America.
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