Does Training AI Infringe Copyright?

By Guðrún Björk Bjarnadóttir[*]Supreme Court attorney at law and CEO of the Icelandic Composers Rights Society.

Generative AI has an enormous economic potential and is profoundly impacting the cultural and creative industries by creating new opportunities, as well as imminent uncertainties and risks, for human creators.

Copyright-protected works are being used “en masse” to train AI systems, in most cases without the permission of their authors or any form of remuneration to them.

At the same time, the huge amount of content generated by AI systems and provided for free or at a low cost enters into direct competition with the original human-created works, lowering the value or simply replacing the use of the latter. This is unacceptable for creative professionals and directly threatens their economic livelihoods.