Govt Panel Calls on AI Developers to Take Care With Data; Aim is to Balance Tech Advancement, Property Rights

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:45 JST, March 22, 2024 

The government approved an outline of an interim report on how to protect intellectual property rights in the face of rapidly developing generative artificial intelligence, calling on AI developers and providers to properly collect the data used to train AI models and to pay creators for their content.

The government on Thursday held an online meeting of a panel tasked with discussing the protection of intellectual property rights in the era of AI and approved the outline of the interim report.

According to the outline, the government will aim to establish an ecosystem to achieve a harmonious coexistence between the advancement of AI technologies and the appropriate protection of intellectual property rights. It emphasizes the necessity for measures that encompass various areas such as legal regulations, contracts and technologies.

The outline recommends that AI developers and providers voluntarily implement such measures as: signing a contract to acquire data for AI training and paying the rights holders for their content, and employing technologies that would not violate the intellectual property rights of others.

At the same time, it asks rights holders to prepare data for AI training and to manage the data that they do not want to be used for AI training. And it calls on AI users to confirm whether AI models are reliable before using them and to use them in an appropriate manner.

As for technological measures, the outline stipulates that a digital technology called Originator Profile (OP), which identifies the senders of information online, is effective in the efforts to protect intellectual property rights. The panel is scheduled to compile the interim report based on the outline in late April.