THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE TDM OPT-OUT AND DEVELOPMENT OF LICENSING SOLUTIONS
Oral submission is attached here, as well as the questionnaire of the European Commission here. Three questions were answered and the floor taken twice (see below).
It was an excellent meeting. It was selective. The visual media industry was represented with two delegates, which is a good sign: Sylvie Fodor for CEPIC and Jonathan Lockwood from GETTY-IMAGES. The format under Chatham House rule allowed for a free flow of speech and authenticity of thoughts. From the side of the European Commission the main representatives of DG Connect were present, notably:
- Giuseppe ABBAMONTE;
- Kilian GROSS;
- Emmanuelle DU CHALARD ;
- Thierry BOULANGÉ
On the one side selected representatives of the rightsholder (RH) community:
On the other side:
- Meta
- Google
- Open AI
- Microsoft
- The representaive of small AI developers (name missing)
- Adobe
- Spawning AI
- Hugging Face
There was also a representative of the performers organisation AEPO-Artis and for consumers (name missing), Paul Keller, Co-Founder and Policy Director at Open Future.
Running of the meeting
Giuseppe Abbamonte clarified that the meeting would be led question by question and that each submission should not be longer than 2 minutes.
The afternoon was devoted to the presentation of several opt-out solutions, notably:
- John Colomos for Adobe presented the CAI and C2PA
- A representative of the W3C presented their opt-out features for publishers
- Spawning A (who works with Have I Been Trained) made a presentation of AI.txt
CEPIC's contribution
Question 1
EXISTING SOLUTIONS FOR THE RESERVATION OF RIGHTS UNDER THE TDM EXCEPTION
After reminding that Art. 4.3 had not been written with Generative AI in mind, I presented the existing opt-out solutions from Robot-txt to metadata and watermark and their challenges for rightsholders of the visual crearive industries. I insisted that due to these difficulties, "natural language" such as terms & conditions on websites but also even emails should be taken in consideration. I finished by reminding of what had happened to Robert Knesckte when he tried to exercise his opt-out rights in Germany - he had both written an email to LAION e.v. and was able to prove that the picture agency hosting his images had an opt-out provision in their terms & conditions.
Mr. Abbamonte found the intervention on "natural language" interresting and asked for feedback from the AI developers.
What they said in essence is that terms& conditions to be "machine-readable" should be "standardized". One AI developer said that it was not possible to know whether the sender of the email was also the RH.
Since AI can already extract "natural language" from contracts, this seems to be a delaying tactic though. CEPIC should conitnue to insist to have "natural language" expressed in "terms & conditions of websites" recognised formally as a valid opt-out solution.
Question 2 - NEED FOR REGISTRIES - HOW CAN the EC HELP
There was a long discussion on whether Registries were desirable and feasible. All AI developers and technologists without exceotion seem to think that a registry - an opt-out registry is necessary and the ideal solution. This was also the opinion of John Colomos who works for Adobe. And this is also the opinion amongst CEPIC's members of IMATAG. Some AI developers would support the EC developing/ financing such a registry. All RH are opposed to a Registry and insist that making opt-out rely on registries would be against the Berne convention.
Answer:
- A Registry could be developed - why not. However, due diligence to find whether a work had been opted-out should not stop at an opt-out Registry. A registry should only be one tool amongst others. The best opt solution is one which works for all, is accessible for all in an easy way- therefore the use of natural language
- That the EC could help by 1) organising similar useful and informative workshops 2) issue opt-out guidances
Question 3 - How to support the development of licensing for training data at scale? How, in your view, could the Commission support the effective
implementation of the TDM exception and the development of the licensing market, between rightholders and AI developers, regardless of their size
Efficient and widely accessible opt-out mechanism is the best way to incentivise licensing practices.
Ethical AI based on opt-in and on remuneration of the input already exists. I mentionned GI, Shutterstock and Firefly of Adobe and BRIA which works with smaller companies too. This is the way forward.
Striking comments
One AI developer asserted that: "99% of the content scraped had no commercial value" and also that "by now all content is opted-out" (meaning that there was nothing more valuable to scrap).
Personal conclusion:
Sylvie Fodor
07.05.2024