Our new Thursday episodes of Decoder are all about deep dives into big topics in the news, and for the next few weeks, we’re going to stay focused on one of the biggest topics of all: generative AI. There’s a lot going on in the world of generative AI, but maybe the biggest is the increasing number of copyright lawsuits being filed against AI companies like OpenAI and Stability AI.
Since computers can’t do anything at all without making copies, copyright law shows up again and again in the history of the internet, which allows anyone to make and distribute perfect copies faster than ever before. But there’s a check on all that control that copyright law provides: fair use. Fair use is written right into the Copyright Act, and it says that certain kinds of copies are okay.