Hugh Stephens: AI issues should be resolved through legislation, not litigation

Carney should make clear that tech giants do not have the right to steal copyrighted works

There is an ongoing struggle between the tech world of artificial intelligence training and the cultural world of content creation. It has led to lots of litigation but also an increasing number of licensing agreements, the obvious market solution. Anyone who has seen the striking graphic “ Who is Suing Whom in AI ,” created by the design website Information is Beautiful, will be struck by the enormity and breadth of the issue, which is so cleverly displayed, with the big AI developers such as Perplexity, Anthropic, Meta, Google, OpenAI, Midjourney, Cohere and others at the centre, and the creators (every content entity from Condé Nast, Getty Images, Universal Music Group, CNN, Disney and Thomson Reuters to Elsevier, Dow Jones, the New York Times and others) ranged around the periphery, a stunning visual encompassing more than 100 lawsuits in the United States.

That graphic was up-to-date as of June. Since then, at least one more major lawsuit has been filed, by a group of textbook