MPA Sees “No Need” For New AI Copyright Legislation Or Special Rules, Warns Of “Inflexible” Regulation

deadline.com:

Despite the D.C. push to establish guardrails around artificial intelligence, major studios are warning against “inflexible” rules when it comes to copyright, asserting that existing law is sufficient to deal with the emerging AI technology.

The studios’ positions on a host of issues regarding AI were outlined in a Motion Picture Association filing with the U.S. Copyright Office.

AI also is said to be a major point of contention in talks between the SAG-AFTRA and the AMPTP. In the filing, the MPA‘s legal team, including Karyn Temple, Benjamin Sheffner and Terrica Carrington, wrote that the studio members’ “overarching view, based on the current state, is that while AI technologies raise a host of novel questions, those questions implicate well-established copyright law doctrines and principles.

At present, there is no reason to conclude that these existing doctrines and principles will be inadequate to provide courts and the Copyright Office with the tools they need to answer AI-related questions as and when they arise.” They added, “At the current time, however, there is no need for legislation or special rules to apply copyright law in the context of AI.” “Developments in AI, like preceding technological advancements, have a great potential to enhance, not replace, human creativity,” they wrote. “MPA’s members further believe these developments can, and should, co-exist with a copyright system that incentivizes the creation of original expression and protects the rights of copyright owners.” Read the MPA filing.