ANALYSIS: Generative AI to Test the Boundaries of Fair Use

“This copyright dispute tests the boundaries of fair use,” Judge Pierre N. Leval wrote at the beginning of the Second Circuit’s 2015 opinion in Authors Guild v. Google, Inc. In this case, the author-plaintiffs sued Google for copyright infringement for scanning digital copies of books, without permission from the copyright holders, and establishing a publicly available search function. The court ultimately decided on summary judgment that Google’s copying was fair use under the doctrine by that name.

In 2015, it was inconceivable that those boundaries would be tested again by the creation of generative artificial intelligence and large language models. ...