Kalakshar US

The Supreme Court has ruled that Andy Warhol has infringed on the copyright of Lynn Goldsmith, the photographer who took the image that he used for his famous silkscreen of the musician Prince. Goldsmith won the justices over 7-2, disagreeing with Warhol’s camp that his work was transformative enough to prevent any copyright claims. In the majority opinion written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she noted that “Goldsmith’s original works, like those of other photographers, are entitled to copyright protection, even against famous artists.” 

Goldsmith’s story goes as far back as 1984, when Vanity Fair licensed her Prince photo for use as an artist reference. The photographer received $400 for a one-time use of her photograph, which Warhol then used as the basis for a silkscreen that the magazine published. Warhol then created 15 additional works based on her photo, one of which was sold to Condé Nast for another magazine story about Prince. The Andy Warhol Foundation (AWF) — the artist had passed away by then — got $10,000 it, while Goldsmith didn’t get anything. 

Typically, the use of copyrighted material for a limited and “transformative” purpose without the copyright holder’s permission falls under “fair use.” But what passes as “transformative” use can be vague, and that vagueness has led to numerous lawsuits. In this particular case, the court has decided that adding “some new expression, meaning or message” to the photograph does not constitute “transformative use.” Sotomayor said Goldsmith’s photo and Warhol’s silkscreen serve “substantially the same purpose.” 

Indeed, the decision could have far ranging implications for fair use and could influence future cases on what constitutes as transformative work. Especially now that we’re living in the era of content creators who could be taking inspiration from existing music and art. As CNN reports, Justice Elena Kagan strongly disagreed with her fellow justices, arguing that the decision would stifle creativity. She said the justices mostly just cared about the commercial purpose of the work and did not consider that the photograph and the silkscreen have different “aesthetic characteristics” and did not “convey the same meaning.”

“Both Congress and the courts have long recognized that an overly stringent copyright regime actually stifles creativity by preventing artists from building on the works of others. [The decision will] impede new art and music and literature, [and it will] thwart the expression of new ideas and the attainment of new knowledge. It will make our world poorer,” she wrote. 

The justices who wrote the majority opinion, however, believe that it “will not impoverish our world to require AWF to pay Goldsmith a fraction of the proceeds from its reuse of her copyrighted work. Recall, payments like these are incentives for artists to create original works in the first place.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/the-supreme-courts-warhol-decision-could-have-huge-copyright-implications-for-fair-use-103547155.html?src=rss 

Apple is famous for being protective of its projects and for expecting secrecy from its workers. Now, according to The Wall Street Journal, the tech giant is concerned about the possibility of its employees inadvertently leaking proprietary data while using ChatGPT. To prevent that scenario from happening, Apple has reportedly restricted the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools, such as GitHub’s Copilot that can autocomplete code. The Journal also says that Apple is working on large language models of its own. 

In early April, The Economist Koreareported that three Samsung employees shared confidential information with ChatGPT. Apparently, one employee asked the chatbot to check database source code for errors, while another asked it to optimize code. The third employee reportedly uploaded a recorded meeting onto the chatbot and asked it to write minutes. It’s unclear how Apple is restricting use of generative AI tools and if it’s prohibiting their use completely. But in Samsung’s case, the company restricted the length of employees’ ChatGPT prompts to a kilobyte or 1024 characters of text. 

Large language models like OpenAI’s become better the more people use them, because users’ interactions are sent back to developers for further training. ChatGPT’s terms and conditions, for instance, state that conversations “may be reviewed by [its] AI trainers to improve [its] systems.” For a secretive company like Apple, limiting their use doesn’t come as a surprise. That said, OpenAI introduced a new privacy control setting in April that enables users to switch off their chat histories so that their conversations can’t be used for training. The company made it available after it had to pull ChatGPT for a few hours due to a bug that showed users other people’s chat histories. 

Not much is known about Apple’s LLM projects at the moment, if there truly are any, but all its AI efforts are under the supervision of John Giannandrea, who used to lead Google’s search and AI teams. The tech giant has also snapped up a number of AI startups over the past few years. When asked about AI in an interview recently, Apple chief Tim Cook hinted that the tech giant is taking a cautious approach by saying: “I do think it’s very important to be deliberate and thoughtful in how you approach these things.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-may-have-restricted-employee-use-of-chatgpt-due-to-privacy-concerns-073141519.html?src=rss 

Elon Musk’s personal lawyer, Alex Spiro, has reportedly sent Microsoft a letter that accuses it of using Twitter API “for unauthorized uses and purposes.” According to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, Spiro wrote that “Microsoft may have been in violation of multiple provisions of the agreement for an extended period of time.” In particular, it accuses Microsoft of improperly using Twitter data, such as using more than what it was supposed to and sharing that data with government agencies without permission. Spiro also wrote that Microsoft had declined to pay for its data usage. 

Microsoft had used Twitter data via its API for years in several products, including those related to Xbox, Bing and its advertising tools. However, after Twitter ended free access to its API, Microsoft decided to start distancing itself from the website. It removed Twitter from its social media management tool for advertisers, and it also switched off the option to upload screenshots and clips directly to Twitter from Xbox consoles and the Game Bar on Windows. The tech giant didn’t explain the reason behind those decisions, but Twitter has been charging organizations up to $50,000 a month to access its new API.

In response to a tweet about Microsoft dropping Twitter from its social media management tool, Elon Musk said: “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.” It’s also worth noting that Musk and Microsoft have had a bumpy relationship lately, with the former claiming that the tech giant is controlling its partner OpenAI. Microsoft, which has invested a total of $13 billion in the ChatGPT creator, said the claim was “factually not correct.” Musk also told Fox News that he was concerned that ChatGPT “is being trained to be politically correct” and that he was looking to create his own generative AI chatbot called “TruthGPT.” He also criticized OpenAI, which he helped start as a non-profit in 2015, for turning into a for-profit business. 

It’s unclear if this event will culminate into a lawsuit, but Twitter is demanding that Microsoft examine the data use of its apps. Twitter also wants Microsoft to submit a report by June on how much of its data the company has and how it’s stored and used. In addition, it wants to know when Microsoft had given government organizations access to its data. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/twitter-reportedly-accuses-microsoft-of-violating-its-data-use-policy-052356286.html?src=rss