Copyright v. AI in the European Union

Join the Tech Institute for a lecture on artificial intelligence and copyright in the European Union by Matthias Leistner, Professor of Civil Law and Intellectual Property Law with Information and IT-Law at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. The first EU-wide judgment on the copyright issues involved in training AI, the Regional Court of Hamburg’s judgment in the Laion case, provides some valuable initial guideposts on the interpretation of the EU’s copyright exception for text and data mining, but many questions – including the issue of territoriality – remain. In response, the EU has passed the AI Act, effectively requiring AI companies to comply with certain regulatory duties around transparency and the establishment of a policy to respect EU copyright law. The private enforceability of this new framework and its international effects raise further intricate questions in the global regulatory landscape. This presentation will try to disentangle these different instruments and their interaction,  propose some tentative answers and, finally, draw a larger policy perspective on the future of copyright regulation of AI training in the EU. This event is part of the Global TechNet Working Group’s AI Governance Series.