Several media companies and content creators have initiated lawsuits against generative AI (artificial intelligence) software companies like OpenAI (developer of ChatGPT), MidJourney, and Devian Art. In the AI lawsuits timeline, the issue primarily focuses on alleged copyright violations, with claims asserting that AI companies unlawfully train their large language models (LLMs) using copyrighted content from media sources.
The stakes are exceptionally high for internet creators, generative AI developers, and their investors. Critics argue that generative AI exacerbates the challenges for content providers, alleging that these AI systems improperly collect and exploit copyrighted and trademarked material. As a result, some claim that generative AI poses a serious threat to the long-term visibility of content producers worldwide.
Outlined below are key legal timelines affecting generative AI and how they can be managed and updated within legal timeline software for future tracking.
History of Generative AI
Generative AI is a form of artificial intelligence capable of creating various types of content, including text, images, audio, and synthetic data. While early versions appeared in chatbots during the 1960s, it wasn’t 2014, with the development of generative AI becoming advanced enough to produce highly realistic images, videos, and audio resembling real people.
The introductions of large language models (LLMs) further advanced generative AI. Using deep learning techniques, LLMs enable the AI to perform natural language processing (NLP), enhancing its ability to understand, translate, and predict language. This innovation has allowed newer generative AI models to generate human-like, accurate, and coherent responses.
The Rise of Generative AI and Early Legal Concerns
As companies such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and others began to develop AI systems capable of creating text, images, and even music, concerns around intellectual property, copyright, and data usage began to surface.
2018: First wave of copyright concerns
As generative models emerged, questions around the ownership of AI-generated content started to gain traction. The core issue was whether creations made by AI could be copyrighted, and if so, who would own the rights— the developer, the user, or the AI itself?
2019: AI-generated content and copyright challenges
In 2019, several artists and writers began to express concerns about AI tools like DeepArt and Artbreeder that were generating new images based on existing works. This raised questions about whether these AI creations were derivative works and whether the original creators deserved compensation. Early generative AI lawsuits focused on how much of the original work was used to train these models and whether that constituted a breach of copyright law.
Key Lawsuits From 2020 to 2022
2020: Author vs. generative text models
The Authors Guild brought attention to the use of generative text models claiming that many of these AI systems were trained using copyrighted material without permission. This AI legal dispute began over whether training an AI on copyrighted texts was considered “fair use” This lawsuit sparked a broader debate on data rights, copyright, and the ethical use of proprietary content to train AI models.
2021: Visual artists and AI-generated images
In 2021, there was a significant uptick in AI art lawsuits from visual artists. Companies like DeepMid and Runway ML were targeted for their use of large data sets that included copyrighted art. Artists argued that their work had been scraped from the web without consent and that AI-generated images based on these datasets constituted an infringement of their creative rights.
2022: The case of OpenAI and data scraping
In 2022, a landmark case was brought against OpenAI by a consortium of publishers and news outlets. The plaintiffs argued that their article has been used to train OpenAI’s models, particularly GPT-3 without permission. This case brought to the forefront the issues of data scraping, where AI companies would use vast amounts of publicly available data without compensating the original creators. The lawsuit questioned the legality of such practices, and it became a focal point for future regulations around AI and data usage.
Major 2023 Lawsuits and 2024 Updates
2023: Musicians vs AI-generated music
The music industry will become the next frontier in 2023. AI-generated music, powered models trained on vast libraries of existing tracks, led to a string of lawsuits by artists, producers, and record labels. A significant case involved Universal Music Group (UMG), which filed an AI-generated music lawsuit against a tech company for producing AI-generated tracks that resembled popular artists’ styles. UMG argued that AI systems were infringing on both copyright and the “right of publicity,” particularly for deceased artists whose voices were synthesized by AI.
May 2024 Updates: Lawsuits and warnings
May 16: Sony Warns AI Companies
According to a Bloomberg report, Sony Music Group, one of the largest record labels globally, issued warnings to AI companies and music streaming platforms, cautioning them against using its content without proper authorization. Sony Music sent letters to over 700 companies in a bid to safeguard its intellectual property, which includes album cover art, metadata, musical compositions, and lyrics, from being used to train AI models.
May 16: Lawsuit vs. Lovo
Two voice actors have sued AI startup Lovo in Manhattan federal court, alleging that the company unlawfully replicated their voices and used them in its AI voiceover technology without their permission, as reported by Reuters.
May 21: Potential Lawsuit
As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, actress Scarlett Johansson has threatened to take legal action against OpenAI. The report states that the company allegedly copied and imitated her voice after she refused to license it to them.
June 2024: Lawsuits and Licensing Deals
June 11: AI lawsuit dropped
CNBC reports that Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk dropped his lawsuit against OpenAI and co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. In the suit, Musk alleged that Open AI abandoned its social-good mission to focus on revenue opportunities.
June 14: Proposed lawsuit settlement
In a Reuters report, facial recognition company Clearview AI has agreed to settle claims that it violated the privacy rights of millions of Americans. The settlement is part of an unusual class action agreement, based on a potential future stake in the company’s value.
June 24: Music industry files lawsuit
According to The Indian Express, several major record labels have filed lawsuits against two AI startups, Suno and Udio, accusing them of copyright infringement on an “almost unimaginable scale”. The lawsuit claims that these companies developed AI tools capable of generating music tracks within seconds based on user prompts. The plaintiffs, including Sony Music, Universal Music Group, Atlantic Records, Warner Bros, and Capitol Records, filed two separate complaints on June 24.
June 25: Anthropic legal case
Anthropic persuaded a Tennessee federal judge to transfer a music publisher’s lyrics copyright lawsuit to a California district court. The judge ruled that the eight music publishers, including Universal Music Group and Concord Music Group Inc., did not demonstrate that the Tennessee court had personal jurisdiction as reported by Bloomberg.
June 26: YouTube content licensing deals
According to a Financial Times report, YouTune is negotiating with record labels to secure licenses for their songs to be used in artificial intelligence tools that replicate the music of popular artists. To address the industry’s concerns, YouTube offers upfront payments as part of the deal. Google, which owns YouTube, is also a major investor in AI startup Anthropic.
June 27: OpenAI content partnership
TIME and OpenAI have announced a multi-year partnership that will integrate TIME’s content into OpenAI’s products, including ChatGPT. The financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
June 27: New lawsuit
The Center for Investigative Reporting, the parent organization of Mother Jones and Reveal, has filed a lawsuit against ChatGPT developer OpenAI and Microsoft, according to the Associated Press. This lawsuit opens a new chapter in the ongoing legal struggle between news organizations and AI platforms over the unauthorized use of their content.
June 27: Alleged content scraping
According to Wired, Amazon’s cloud division has initiated an investigation into Perplexity AI. The investigation aims to determine whether the AI search startup has breached AWS regulations by scraping websites that had implemented measures to prevent such activity.
June 28: European Union scrutinizes OpenAI-Microsoft deal
The European Union is intensifying its scrutiny of the artificial intelligence sector, including revisiting Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI, according to the Associated Press.
July 2024: Generative AI Lawsuits
July 1: New York Times vs. OpenAI
In a new development in the lawsuit, OpenAI has requested that The New York Times provide proof that it is the source of certain content, according to a letter from OpenAI’s attorney addressed to a New York judge.
July 5: Court ruling
According to Bloomberg Law, OpenAI and GitHub have avoided legal claims from open-source software developers who alleged that the AI coding tool Copilot copied their code without including proper copyright notices and licensing information.
July 11: Legal representation
In a report by Billboard, AI music companies Suno and Udio have hired the top law firm Latham and Watkins to represent them in lawsuits filed by three major record labels in late June 2024.
July 13: OpenAI concerns
OpenAI whistle-blowers have complained to the Securities and Exchange Commission, accusing the company of unlawfully preventing employees from alerting regulators about the significant risks its technology could pose to humanity, The Washington Post reported.
July 19: Lawsuits vs. OpenAI and Microsoft
OpenAI is off the hook after a group of open-source programmers voluntarily dropped their copyright lawsuit in federal court, per Bloomberg. However, the lawsuits against GitHub and its parent company, Microsoft, are still ongoing.
July 31: AI concerns
Perplexity AI introduced a revenue-sharing model for publishers following over a month of plagiarism allegations, CNBC reported.
July 31: AI investigations
SeekingAlpha reported that the UK’s antitrust agency is reviewing Google’s partnership with AI startup Anthropic.
August 2024: Generative AI Lawsuits
August 2: Scope narrowed
According to The Hollywood Reporter, a U.S District Judge dismissed a claim accusing OpenAI of unfair business practices for using the works of authors— such as Sarah Silverman, Paul Tremblay, and Ta-Nehisi Coates— without permission or compensation to train its AI system. However, the report noted that the author’s main claim of direct copyright infringement is still active in the case.
August 5: Elon Musk vs. OpenAI
Elon Musk has refiled a lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman accusing the company of prioritizing profits and commercial interests over the public good, per Reuters. Additionally, Musk has launched xAI to compete with OpenAI.
August 9: AI Lawsuit
According to Reuters, software company Anaconda has filed a lawsuit against Intel in Delaware federal court, accusing the chipmaker of improperly using its software to develop AI platforms.
August 14: X (formerly Twitter) faces a lawsuit
Austrian advocacy group NOYB has complained about the social media platform X, as reported by Reuters. The group accuses the Elon Musk-owned company of training its AI using users’ personal data without their consent, which would violate EU privacy laws.
August 21: Content License
Magazine publisher Conde Nast has entered into a multi-year licensing agreement with OpenAI, as reported by The Information. Content from Conde Nast publications will now be featured in OpenAI products, including ChatGPT and SearchGPT.
August 21: Class-action lawsuit vs. Anthropic
As per CNBC, authors Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson have initiated a class-action lawsuit against Anthropic, claiming that the company “built a multibillion-dollar business by stealing hundreds of thousands of copyrighted books.”
August 28: OpenAI responds
In a court filing, OpenAI refuted claims that it misused the work of authors such as Michael Chabon, Ta Nehisi Coates, and the comedian Sarah Silverman to train its AI language models, according to Reuters.
September 24: Generative AI Lawsuits
September 16: Lawsuit vs Google
In a Reuters report, Gemini Data, a small AI company, has sued Google, alleging that the tech giant infringed on trademark rights associated with the Gemini name.
September 18: Lawsuit vs Nvidia
Neural AI has initiated a lawsuit against Nvidia, claiming that a range of software, including AI tools, violates several patents related to machine learning technology. An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit when approached by Bloomberg Law.
September 19: Meta lawsuit
According to Politico, a federal judge harshly criticized the lawyers representing a group of prominent authors who are suing Meta for using their work to train the company’s AI technology.
September 26: Meta lawsuit
A group of U.S. authors has been granted the opportunity to depose Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a lawsuit alleging that Meta misused copyrighted books to train its AI systems, per Reuters. Meta had attempted to prevent the authors from questioning Zuckerberg.
October 2024: Generative AI Lawsuits
October 1: Legal Update
OpenAI and Microsoft’s GitHub are set to appear before the nation’s largest federal appeals court to address their initial copyright lawsuits by open-source programmers, Bloomberg reported. The programmers allege that Microsoft Copilot infringes on a long-standing digital copyright.
October 3: Potential lawsuit against Meta
Novelist Christopher Farnsworth has filed a proposed class-action copyright lawsuit against Meta, as reported by Reuters. The lawsuit alleges that the parent company of Facebook misused his books to train its Llama artificial intelligent large language model.
Stay updated on new changes in the generative AI timeline here.
Generative AI technology continues to advance at a breakneck speed, and with it, so do the complexities surrounding its legal implications.
Future legal challenges for AI are anticipated to include data privacy lawsuits, international legal disputes, and ethical considerations regarding AI usage. With the increasing use of personal data in generative AI models, lawsuits centered around data privacy will likely rise. Different countries also have varying intellectual property laws, and as AI tools are used globally, international legal disputes may arise regarding the cross-border use of copyrighted material. Further, beyond legal concerns, AI-generated misinformation and the potential for AI to be used for malicious purposes could spur new regulations and legal battles.
Key Takeaways and Monitoring Legal Framework with TrialLine
As lawsuits around generative AI continue to shape the legal framework, developers, and users alike must remain vigilant. AI developers should be transparent about the data they use to train models. They should also consider offering compensation to artists, writers, and musicians whose work is users in training datasets. Any company developing or using generative AI tools should seek legal advice to stay compliant with evolving regulations.
The intersection of AI and law remains in its early stages, and as new technology develops, fresh legal challenges will arise. Staying informed and prepared is essential for navigating this swiftly evolving landscape. One effective way to keep up with these changes is by tracking developments and staying updated on the generative AI lawsuit timelines through TrialLine, a timeline software. By creating timelines for both technological advancements and legal disputes, legal counsel can provide better guidance on the use of data to train language models for AI. To discover more about TrialLine and how to utilize it, sign up for a free trial and schedule a demo with one of our experts.