Fate of AI and Fair Use Copyright Report Will Depend on Judges

Federal courts—not the US Copyright Office—will have the final say on implementing any recommendations from the office’s forthcoming report on the fair use ramifications of training AI on protected works.

The first part of the report, released in July, called on Congress to pass a law protecting people from unauthorized deepfakes. Register of Copyrights Shira Perlmutter recently told senators the office plans to publish by the end of 2024 a framework for analyzing the fair use doctrine’s applicability to AI’s use of copyrighted works.

Judges across the country are presiding over roughly three dozen lawsuits against ...