While we were busy ringing in the New Year, the NYT sued ChatGPT and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming that Open AI and Microsoft used the Times’s articles to train their large language models. At the heart of the suit is that AI can offer up the results of an entire news article as an answer to a query, without requiring a user to ever visit the Times’s website. In their defense (which has not been talked about much yet), the defendants will likely cite the “fair use”argument and they’ve publicly stated that the use of training materials for LLMs is “a new transformative purpose.”

Hogwash? Copyright infringement is copyright infringement, and using things without attribution is infringement, regardless of how novel the use is. It’s instructive to read the Times’s filing to best understand what’s at stake here. 

We’re betting that this copyright story will be one of the biggest stories of 2024 (aside, perhaps, from politics). The Times is the first big media company to sue, but handfuls of writers and artists including comedian Sarah Silverman and authors George R.R. Martin and John Grishman have already jumped aboard with similar suits. 

Copyright Needs a Digital Facelift

From the moment you could cut and paste, copyright has been an irksome thorn in our digital life. Copyright law, which incidentally has its origins in the horse and buggy days of America’s 1700s, hasn’t changed much to meet the realities of a digital age, never mind the age of AI.

Plus, OpenAI and Microsoft have both been pretty cagey about who’s training what on whom. As longtime colleague Dan Tynan writes, “The results of this case could determine what kind of AI tools are available to the public, and the business models they will operate under. If the makers of AI models have to pay for access to the public data they used, it will likely kill a lot of them, and make others prohibitively expensive to use. (On the other hand, OpenAI is valued at upwards of $80 billion — it can afford to pay for the materials that helped to make it rich, at least on paper.)”

It’s not the first time users of digital platforms have been pawns in the game. When we collectively realized that our eyeballs and comments were the product that social media platforms really needed to sell to advertisers, it laid the groundwork for what’s about to follow. We’re about to find out that every digital word we write is part of the collective canon of words that train AIs that will make a lot of money off our sweat and blood. It’s the digital equivalent of a feudal system.

At a minimum, it’s time for AI companies to disclose what materials they use in the training of their models. Proper citations for the origins of the information for each query would be helpful too. And it’s time to start thinking seriously about financial remuneration to those whose words (and images) feed the AI beast. 

The ones I tested were free, but there are hundreds of these AI-based headshot generators to choose from including the well-reviewed Aargon, which offers a money-back guarantee, and Lensa, which offers a free 7-day trial once you provide credit card info.

Your AI Kitchen 
What could possibly go wrong? At CES 2024 Samsung will unveil its new AI-powered kitchen products. Cameras in the fridge, combined with AI, will be able to dream up recipes that you can cook based on your fridge’s contents. (But will it know that the mayo has been sitting on my shelf since 2019?)

All Eyes on Apple
Sometimes getting there first is not the answer. It’s getting there best. So all eyes are on the Vision Pro, Apple’s entry into the AR and VR headset world. Pundits are hoping it will give the XR world a much-needed shot in the arm of excitement. The $3,500 headset is due out early in 2024. (Apple has a long history of introducing products from 1,000 miles away while the tech-faithful are gathered at CES.)

We Hardly Knew Ye
A last moment for some tech nostalgia as we head into 2024: 

• Hyperloop
  We cheered for the idea of a high-speed tube that would magnetically levitate us and our cargo between destinations. Alas, this high-speed transportation system of the future has been relegated to a thing of the past.
• Bird
  In another future-transportation fiasco, e-scooter maker Bird filed for bankruptcy in the US. It was undone in large part by lawsuits and accidents.
• WeWork
  Add WeWork to the list of failed startups that hailed themselves as the future. The company’s bankruptcy filing proved that office-sharing was not immune to the WFH craze.

Worth the Download 
The conversation is shifting from ROI to ROE (return on Events), according to this new paper from PCMA. They convened a slew of event experts who offered a refreshing look at how to evaluate event success, both in person and virtual. 

Did You Major in “Creator”
Desperate to attract a new generation of degree seekers, academia is embracing the creator economy as a serious career choice, and designing curriculum and degrees to help prepare students for the creator path. Predicted to be half-a-trillion dollars by 2027, colleges recognize the legitimacy of the job path. Never mind the fact that 54% of young adults have expressed interest in becoming content creators. Check out Zippia’s list if you’re thinking of that Creator degree. 

Nostalgic for 2023? 
Take a look at the 2023 trending searches on Google. Makes you realize how fleeting a Google search trend is, and makes you wonder why no American museums turn up on the list.