Knobbe Martens partner Mauricio Uribe recently shared insights with New York Magazine in the article, “How Big Tech Companies Really Think About AI.” The article examines the state of opening arguments in litigation against major tech companies regarding various large language models, generally referred to as generative AI.
The article explains that the initial set of filings against most big generative AI companies included multiple plaintiffs and numerous causes of action. Uribe points out that many of the initial set of filings by the defendant are attempting to narrow down the issues in dispute by asking for the dismissal of many of the initially claimed causes of action, such as claims based on data privacy, negligence, and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Ultimately, this may result in the dispute being more focused on the claims based on alleged copyright infringement. Uribe analogizes these initial set of arguments to “’seeing the undercard of the prize fight.’” Though many of these high-profile lawsuits dominate headlines, arguments regarding some of the fundamental intellectual property issues related to copyright law and AI will not likely be resolved in the earlier stages of the litigation.
The piece also explores the amount of non-legal arguments and conjecture in both sides’ legal responses to these lawsuits, including “full-throated defenses […] of generative AI as a project and as an industry.” Speaking to this point, Uribe asserts that these impassioned defenses, while contained within legal filings, “are ‘completely extraneous to legal questions.’”
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