philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The AI-focused COPIED Act would make removing digital watermarks illegal

PhilNote: I like that it appears to have teeth, but there is a good chance that, as a slow-moving NIST process, by the time it is developed and deployed industry will say the market is too big to implement it and it is unenforceable anyway. Oh yeah, also it will "stifle innovation."

A bipartisan group of senators introduced a new bill to make it easier to authenticate and detect artificial intelligence-generated content and protect journalists and artists from having their work gobbled up by AI models without their permission.

The Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED Act) would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards and guidelines that help prove the origin of content and detect synthetic content, like through watermarking. It also directs the agency to create security measures to prevent tampering and requires AI tools for creative or journalistic content to let users attach information about their origin and prohibit that information from being removed. Under the bill, such content also could not be used to train AI models.

Content owners, including broadcasters, artists, and newspapers, could sue companies they believe used their materials without permission or tampered with authentication markers. State attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission could also enforce the bill, which its backers say prohibits anyone from “removing, disabling, or tampering with content provenance information” outside of an exception for some security research purposes. ...

See the full story here: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/11/24196769/copied-act-cantwell-blackburn-heinrich-ai-journalists-artists?mc_cid=442e730f2e&mc_eid=3ce5196977