Let's play AI-copyright deniers' BINGO!
Two dozen excuses used to justify ripping off creators in one handy game card
THE NEXT TIME you hear a hi-tech leader or one of their enthusiastic followers talking about AI and copyright, make note of the words they use to justify the training of generative models on creatorsâ content without consent or compensation. Our card has 24 copyright-denying excuses. Will it be a full house?
FOOTNOTES:
The most frequently cited excuse, used by all the copyright-denying AI companies and stated with such confidence youâd think that fair use â an exception under the US Copyright Act â is settled. Which, of course, it isnât ⌠as these lawsuits currently working their way through the courts testify.
Admission from OpenAI in evidence to the House of Lords in January 2024.
View of venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz in its submission to the US AI Action Plan, March 2025.
Often-cited excuse, famously used by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati in that awkward interview with The Wall Street Journal in March 2024. Just because something is available doesnât mean itâs legal to take it, as filmmaker Justine Bateman said in October 2024.
Novel concept promoted by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, June 2024. Nonsense, of course.
Idea concocted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, October 2024, later developed by the Tony Blair Institute in a pro-tech report on AI and copyright in April 2025.
Long-running claim of AI boosters, cited here for example, and AI companies such as Google which in April 2025 stated in its response to the UKâs consultation on AI and copyright that âthere are no copies of content in the model itselfâ. However, in October 2024 OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji said âthe process of training a generative model involves making copies of copyrighted dataâ. Those copies are generally unauthorised.
Often-stated view of the AIs, for example OpenAI said in its submission to the US AI Action Plan in March 2025 that its models use copyrighted works âwithout eroding the commercial value of those existing worksâ.
Argument advanced by Meta in April 2025 in its defence of class action lawsuit Richard Kadrey et al v. Meta Platforms.
Often-deployed statement used by AI companies, in particular Google, when urging governments to water-down copyright regimes.
Stated by UK technology secretary Peter Kyle in March 2025, implying reform is long overdue. The UKâs first Copyright Act was passed in 1710. Copyright protection is as relevant, and necessary, as it was then. Only more so.
A central theme of the UK governmentâs consultation on AI and copyright, published December 2024, and subsequent AI Opportunities Action Plan, published January 2025. Copyright laws are, of course, crystal clear and completely certain. Whatâs not is knowledge of whatâs been used to train the AI developersâ generative models â hence calls for transparency on their part.
An assertion made by OpenAI (ânational securityâ was mentioned 21 times in its submission to the US AI Action Plan, March 2025), and by the Tony Blair Institute which warned âstrictâ copyright laws would weaken the UKâs âcapacity to protect national-security interestsâ. How? It remains a mystery.
Venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz in an October 2023 submission to the US Copyright Office said it would be âimpossible to identify who the relevant rights holders are, and thus there would be no viable way to get statutory royalties to the proper partiesâ. Yet copyright licensing and collecting societies are able to do this as a matter of course.
A common retort when AI companies are accused of regurgitating content, a charge made by publishers and creators in several US copyright lawsuits (most notably The New York Times vs OpenAI and Microsoft). In January 2024 OpenAI said it had âmeasures in place to limit inadvertent memorisation and prevent regurgitation in model outputsâ.
Several leading AI companies claim their models make a âtransformativeâ use of the training data. The US Copyright Office says âtransformative uses are those that add something new, with a further purpose or different character, and do not substitute for the original use of the workâ. The threat of substitution is a charge made in several US copyright lawsuits.
A statement made by several AI companies including OpenAI which in its submission to the US AI Action Plan in March 2025 complained that the UKâs proposed opt-out for creators would create âthe same regulatory barriers to AI development that we see in the EUâ.
A charge made by US AI companies and their allies including the Foundation for American Innovation.
A point made by OpenAI in its March 2025 submission to the US AI Action Plan, which mentions China or the Peopleâs Republic of China (PRC) 22 times, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 12 times.
A common hi-tech talking point, notably made by Google in its September 2024 lobbying document.
A âmaximalist approachâ to statutory damages in current US copyright lawsuits âwould hobble if not eradicate many model developersâ said the Foundation for American Innovation in November 2024.
Often cited by AI leaders such as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella who in an October 2024 interview in The Times said he was âdelightedâ with Japanâs approach to copyright.
Tech lobbyists often say they are âdemocratising creativityâ. In the US tech lobby group the Chamber of Progressâ Generate + Create campaign in 2024 said AI was âexpanding access to creativityâ.
This is the view of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg who in September 2024 told The Verge he thought âindividual creators or publishers tend to overestimate the value of their specific content in the grand schemeâ of AI model training.
CUT-OUT-AND-KEEP DEFINITION:
RELATED COVERAGE:
Further coverage on copyright and AI and other developments that threaten to reshape the global human-made media landscape in this Fridayâs Weekly Newsletter
The excuse that bugs me the most: *Itâs no different from a scholar who reads a bunch of books and writes a paper.*
Uh, nope. The scholar knows how to compare sources, how to ferret out bad data, how to recognize fraudulent texts.
Gonna be the fastest bingo I ever complete đđđ