HOW TO CONTRACTUALLY PROTECT YOUR ARTWORK AGAINST AI TRAINING
This article contains contract language illustrators may use to restrict AI companies from using their illustrations as training data.
Law Office of Chuck Cordes
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San Francisco, California 94110
chuck@chuckcordes.com
415-601-0184
One of the issues arising in the current lawsuits against generative AI companies is the absence of contractual permission granted to the AI companies to scrape images from online sources in order to train their systems. Artists will likely confront AI training issues in the form of broad-based website data scraping as well as the potential for permitted users to train their own system with licensed works. Here is some contract language (italicized text below) I’ve drafted addressing the two contexts.
Website Terms of Use
Website operators can, through terms of use, create a contract binding on the site user, which specifies the uses that may be made of content found on the website. Many website operators have now added language expressly prohibiting use of site content in the training of generative AI models. For example, The Economist online magazine says in its terms of use, “you may not do any of the following without prior written permission from The Economist Group: … train machine learning tools or models or any other artificial intelligence technology on … Economist Content.”
You may want to add to your website’s terms of use a section prohibiting use of site content for incorporation into generative AI models. Here’s some sample language:
Intellectual Property
This Site contains intellectual property owned by [Artist], including copyrights, trademarks, and proprietary information. [Artist] reserves all rights in the intellectual property contained on this Site. You may not publish, create derivative works from, or in any way exploit any of the content on the Site, in whole or in part, without the prior, express written agreement of [Artist]. For avoidance of doubt, it is expressly prohibited to scrape, copy, use, or employ any of the content on this Site for the training of, or supplying of content to, any artificial intelligence program or machine learning technology of any kind, including any and all technologies capable of generating works in the same style or genre as the artist whose artworks appear on this Site.
Licensee AI Programs
Another evolving issue is the prospect that companies that license images from artists will be able to develop their own AI-based generative-image programs trained on specific images of the company’s choosing. In other words, a licensee who has licensed images from you could, theoretically, train its own AI model to generate new art in your style. Ideally, this would be barred by the license agreement. You may want to add language to new, or renewed, license agreements with language along these lines:
No Generative AI Training Use
For avoidance of doubt, Licensor reserves the rights, and Licensee has no rights to, reproduce and/or otherwise use the Property in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies to generate images, including without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating images in the same style or genre as the Property. Nor does Licensee have the right to sublicense others to reproduce and/or otherwise use the Property in any manner, including for purposes of training artificial intelligence or machine learning technologies to generate images.