Fair Use: Google CEO Sees a Future Where Creators’ Contributions to AI Models Will Be Compensated
The promising prospect of Artificial Intelligence taking over for humans in a variety of endeavors is both thrilling and fear-inducing, especially for content creators who see their life’s purpose (or at least their jobs) being threatened by it.
The 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike involving both actors and writers for film and television, was in part due to the studios threatening, or actually implementing, AI to write scripts generate artwork, and even replace humans as players on screen – provided the technology gets enough input from creative types to generate what is asked of it.
But at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York Wednesday, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, told the assembled crowd that he believes content creators will be directly compensated for their contributions to Artificial Intelligence sometime soon.
“I do think people will develop [economic] models around it,” Pichai said, adding “there will be a marketplace in the future, I think. There will be creators who create for AI models and get paid for it. I really think that’s part of the future and people will figure it out.”
As for how soon, Pichai responded to moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin’s inquiry about “sending checks” to those whose work helps train Gemini and other Google AI platforms by saying he could see that happening “down the line,” and that Google is paying for some content now.
The company is currently licensing select content for AI, according to Pichai, “where we see value.” Sources such as Reddit, the Associated Press and the New York Times have contracts with Google, but though some content owners have agreed to sell their material to AI proprietors, others have not and instead filed suit against the big tech companies.
Pichai said the trick is finding a balance between “understanding what is fair use, when new technology comes, versus how you give value back proportionate to the value of the IP and the hard work people have put in,” which is apparently up to the tech firms to decide.
Sorkin commented, “I’m sure everyone – Congress, the Supreme Court – will want to weigh in. They will, but if they do, it will be too late.”