On Wednesday, April 19, forty two German organisations and unions that represent more than 140,000 writers, singers, and artists urged the European Union to strengthen proposed AI legislation, citing the threat ChatGPT poses to their copyright.
In a letter to the European Commission, European Council, and EU legislators, the creative industry trade unions Verdi and DGB, as well as groups for photographers, designers, journalists, and illustrators, laid forth their concerns.
The letter emphasised the mounting concerns regarding generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems like ChatGPT, which can imitate humans and generate text and graphics in response to commands.
“The unauthorised usage of protected training material, its non-transparent processing, and the foreseeable substitution of the sources by the output of generative AI raise fundamental questions of accountability, liability, and remuneration, which need to be addressed before irreversible harm occurs,” the letter stated.
“Generative AI is trained on data lakes, and question snippets need to be at the centre of any meaningful AI market regulation,” it said.
The European Commission, which last year proposed AI rules, will hash out the final details with EU lawmakers and member states before the rules become legislation.
The groups said that the regulations should be strengthened to better control generative AI across the whole product cycle, particularly with regard to foundation model suppliers.
They also demand that the makers of such technology be held accountable for all content produced by the AI and distributed as a result, particularly for content that violates intellectual property rights, misrepresents the truth, or is discriminatory.
According to the letter, foundation model service providers like Microsoft (MSFT.O), Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Amazon (AMZN.O), and Meta Platforms (META.O) shouldn’t be permitted to run central platform services for the distribution of digital material.
ChatGPT launched as a prototype on November 30, 2022, and garnered attention for its detailed responses and articulate answers across many domains of knowledge. Its uneven factual accuracy, however, has been identified as a significant drawback