The European Union Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AIA) contains provisions that would require providers of general purpose AI models to comply with transparency obligation regarding the data using for training their models. It also contains a provision that would require providers of general purpose AI models “to put in place a policy to respect Union copyright law in particular to identify and respect, including through state of the art technologies, the reservations of rights expressed” under the text and data mining (TDM) exception in Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/79.… The post Under ..read more

I had the pleasure of speaking at the 31st Annual Fordham Institute Property Law & Policy Conference earlier today. In my view the Fordham conference continues to be the best IP conference anywhere, in terms of attendees, the quality of the program, and speakers. (Where else could you ending up sitting next to [the legendary] Justice Arnold of the U.K. Court of Appeal or talking about copyright or other IP topics with the leading lawyers, academics, and judges from around the world in the field of IP including copyrights, patents, and trademarks?. … The post My Panel on copyright develop ..read more

Two recent decisions regarding copyright and generative artificial intelligence (AI) handed down by Chinese courts are notable. In one, a court found that output created using Stable Diffusion could be subject to copyright. In the other, a court found that output generated by a generative AI system could infringe the reproduction and adaptation right under Chinese copyright law. These decisions raise interesting issues but leave many questions that go to the core of our copyright frameworks unanswered. Copyright in computer generated output A decision of the Beijing Internet Court ruled that a ..read more

There is a lot being written about artificial intelligence (AI). There are also many different ways of defining the term AI including for legal purposes. This post will examine some of the leading legally defined uses of the terms AI and generative artificial intelligence. Legal definitions of Artificial Intelligence The leading definition of artificial intelligence is the recent updated definition of artificial intelligence from the OECD: An AI system is a machine-based system that, for  explicit or implicit objectives, infers, from the input it receives, how to generate outputs such as ..read more

In R. v. Bykovets, 2024 SCC 6, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that for Charter of Rights purposes, a person being investigated by the police has a reasonable expectation of privacy in an IP address in the possession of a third person, in this case a payment processor, even when not linked to any personally identifying information. The decision and its importance is explained in a blog post written by my colleagues  Dan Glover, Andrew Matheson, Connor Bildwell, Greer Hope and I on the McCarthy Tetrault TechLex blog.… The post Privacy of IP Addresses: Understanding the Supreme Court Ruli ..read more

There is a major battle being waged between the world’s democratic countries led by the United States, Germany, France, South Korea, and Japan and the major autocracies led by China and Russia. This battle, called “Cold War 2.0 Artificial Intelligence in the New Battle between China, Russia, and America” in the new book written by George Takach (published by Pegasus Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster), explains the tensions between the democracies and autocracies and provides thoroughly researched insights into the tensions and risks and what the democracies must do to prevail.… The ..read more

The Federal government gave first reading today to the long awaited, Online Harms Act, Bill C-63. The draft law is summarized as follows: Part 1 of this enactment enacts the Online Harms Act, whose purpose is to, among other things, promote the online safety of persons in Canada, reduce harms caused to persons in Canada as a result of harmful content online and ensure that the operators of social media services in respect of which that Act applies are transparent and accountable with respect to their duties under that Act. … The post Online Harms Act: Ensuring the Safety of Persons in C ..read more

In a prior post, I summarized four United States copyright decisions that examined copyright infringement liability for training and making available generative AI (GenAI) services. It focused, among other things, on whether: downloading and copying of works (or other copyright subject matter) to train GenAI models infringes copyright; the trained GenAI models are infringing because they contain or embody copies of training materials in a material object or material form or are, under US law, derivative works; all outputs from GenAI systems are derivative works because they are derived from c ..read more

The recent decision in Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149, represents a milestone in the expanding field of digital interactions and accountability. The case grapples with whether a company can be held liable for misleading information provided by an automated chatbot on its website. The decision held that a company can be liable for negligent misrepresentations made by a chatbot on a publicly available commercial website. The decision represents an incremental development of the law which previously has focused on the liability of persons for their pre-programmed automated tools.… The post ..read more

I had the pleasure of participating in a webinar hosted by DIGITAL earlier today along with John Weigelt of Microsoft and moderated by Jenn Mielgu of DIGITAL. The topic was Unravelling the complex tapestry of AI: what’s keeping organizations up at night? My talk focused on regulatory developments in Canada, the EU, and the United States and how it impacts organizations. It also focused on how AI regulatory developments are impacting contracting of all types. My slides can be accessed below.… The post appeared first on Barry Sookman ..read more