ANALYSIS: In AI Copyright Fights, Fair Use Has an Image Problem

Last year, we saw the first of many copyright infringement cases filed against AI companies. Most have been against OpenAI and other text-based generative AI services. A fellow legal analyst recently predicted that these companies will succeed in 2024 by utilizing a fair use affirmative defense. That might be fine for OpenAI and the future of ChatGPT, but defendants that provide image-based generative AI services may have a harder time asserting a fair use defense than their text-based generative AI counterparts.

Two cases filed in federal courts this year will test the limits of fair use for image-based generative AI: ...