3 Count: Uber Retreats

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1: Setback for Google as EU Court Adviser Warns AI Chatbot May Breach Copyright Rules

First off, today, Inti Landauro and Foo Yun Chee at Reuters report that a judge at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has ruled against Google, saying that its AI summaries could breach the copyright of original authors if it reproduces them in a recognizable form.

The Hungarian website operator Like Company filed the lawsuit, alleging that Google’s Gemini had infringed on their content. Advocate General Maciej Szpunar has said that using a copyright-protected work to generate an answer can be an infringement if the answer is recognizable from the original.

To be clear, this is not a ruling from the court itself. The CJEU follows the majority of its advisory opinions. The court is expected to rule in the coming months. Nonetheless, the opinion does not bode well for Google, which is arguing that its use of content to train AI systems should be protected under Europe’s data-mining exemptions.

2: Photographers are Suing Uber Eats for Copyright Infringement Over Its Use of Their Food Photos

Next up today, Pesala Bandara at PetaPixel reports that a lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. has been allowed to move forward.

The lawsuit was filed by a group of 20 professional photographers who allege that Uber, through its Uber Eats app, unlawfully used their images to promote restaurants on the service. Uber Eats, however, claimed that it received the images from third parties, namely the restaurants themselves, and therefore was not liable for the copyright infringement.

The judge, however, found that Uber’s practice of reviewing and modifying images suggested that the company could prevent copyright infringement and that, since Uber receives a commission on the sales of the restaurants, it financially benefited from this practice.

3: Disney Has Fought AI Firms Over Copyright. Now It’s Testing AI Lyric Videos

Finally, today, Wendy Lee and Samantha Masunaga at the Los Angeles Times report that Disney is experimenting with AI-generated lyric videos based on many of its most popular songs.

The first video to debut is the song “Go the Distance” from the 1997 animated film “Hercules.” The video is part of a collaboration with the AI company OpenArt, which specializes in generating video content.

The move is striking as Disney has long been critical of AI, including filing lawsuits against companies like Midjourney and MiniMax. According to the company, the use of AI is a budget-friendly way to test the waters of this type of content, something that has proven to be very popular on third-party social media channels.

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