(10 May 2025) From the introduction:
This Part of the Copyright Office’s Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence addresses the use of copyrighted works in the development of generative AI systems. The groundbreaking technologies involved draw on massive troves of data, including copyrighted works, to enable the extraordinary capabilities they now offer to the public. Do any of the acts involved require the copyright owners’ consent or compensation? And to the extent they do, how can that feasibly be accomplished?
These issues are the subject of intense debate. Dozens of lawsuits are pending in the United States, focusing on the application of copyright’s fair use doctrine. Legislators around the world have proposed or enacted laws regarding the use of copyrighted works in AI training, whether to remove barriers or impose restrictions.
The stakes are high, and the consequences are often described in existential terms. Some warn that requiring AI companies to license copyrighted works would throttle a transformative technology, because it is not practically possible to obtain licenses for the volume and diversity of content necessary to power cutting-edge systems. Others fear that unlicensed training will corrode the creative ecosystem, with artists’ entire bodies of works used against their will to produce content that competes with them in the marketplace. The public interest requires striking an effective balance, allowing technological innovation to flourish while maintaining a thriving creative community.
Pursuant to the Register of Copyrights’ statutory responsibility to “[c]onduct studies” and “[a]dvise Congress on national and international issues relating to copyright,” the Office published a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) in August 2023 posing a series of questions about copyright
and AI. These included technical questions about how copyrighted works are collected, curated and used in training AI models, legal questions about the application of the fair use doctrine, and factual questions about existing or potential licensing arrangements.
Of the more than 10,000 comments received in response to the NOI, the overwhelming majority addressed one or more of these questions. The Office refers to these comments throughout the discussion below.
The report in full is here.
