Copyright Infringement

OpenAI’s Sora, an AI video generation app, achieved 1 million downloads in under five days, surpassing ChatGPT’s initial adoption. While praised for its novelty and ease of use, Sora faces copyright infringement concerns with unauthorized use of established characters, prompting the MPA to demand action. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman acknowledges these concerns and plans to implement more granular content controls, balancing creative freedom with copyright protection. The company’s approach to copyright management is critical for Sora’s long-term success.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) is urging OpenAI to take immediate action against copyright infringement on its new video creation model, Sora 2. The MPA claims AI-generated clips featuring characters and scenarios resembling copyrighted works are proliferating rapidly. While OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggested a shift towards an opt-in system for rightsholders, the MPA remains unconvinced. This dispute highlights the challenge of balancing AI innovation with intellectual property protection, mirroring recent lawsuits against other AI companies for similar copyright violations. The outcome could set a precedent for managing copyright in the AI age.

Disney has issued a cease and desist letter to AI startup Character.AI over unauthorized use of its copyrighted characters in the chatbot platform. Character.AI, which allows users to interact with AI personas, removed the identified characters. This underscores the growing tension between media companies and AI developers regarding IP rights. Disney is also engaged in litigation against Midjourney over AI-generated content derived from Disney franchises. The legal challenge highlights increasing scrutiny over the legal and ethical boundaries of AI-generated content.

A federal judge preliminarily approved Anthropic’s $1.5 billion settlement in a copyright infringement class-action lawsuit. Authors claimed Anthropic illegally used their works, downloaded from pirated databases, to train its AI model Claude. The settlement, potentially the largest copyright recovery, involves Anthropic paying authors and destroying the datasets. This case highlights the conflict between AI innovation and intellectual property rights, setting a precedent for future AI training practices and copyright law. Anthropic aims to focus on safe AI development after resolving the claims.

The operator of “Sakura Anime,” a Chinese website illegally distributing Japanese anime, has been sentenced to two years and three months imprisonment and fined RMB 15,000 for copyright infringement and forging documents. The Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court upheld the original ruling after an appeal. The website allegedly disseminated over 2,100 anime series without permission, ignoring requests from licensed distributors to remove the content. The case highlights the fight against digital copyright infringement.