Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller has called on publishers to take a stand against Artificial Intelligence, warning the rise of AI chatbots could decimate the business models of news and information providers.
Speaking at the Semafor Media Summit in New York on Monday, Diller said ‘companies can absolutely sue under copyright law’ to stop AI engines from scraping articles and repackaging them.
‘If all the world’s information is able to be sucked up in this maw and then essentially repackaged…there will be no publishing, it is not possible,’ said Diller, the chairman of media conglomerate IAC, which owns Entertainment Weekly, People, and dozens of digital news and information sites.
Diller compared the new age of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT to the early days of the internet, when news outlets that had relied on subscription revenue began publishing articles for free online, gutting their business models.
‘When the internet first began, everything was free, and it was kind of decreed at that time that everything was free, and therefore all publishers said they really had no other choice,’ said Diller.
Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller has warned the rise of AI chatbots could decimate the business models of news and information providers
‘The amount of destruction that took place at the at the beginning when it was declared a free medium…was enormous,’ he added.
‘I think that today is a potentially analogous to that, which is if publishers do not say ‘you cannot scrape our content, you cannot take it’ — you cannot take it transformatively, to get to the key word in fair use, but you cannot take it and use it in real time to actually cannibalize everything,’ said Diller.
‘And if you think that won’t happen, I think you’re just being a fool,’ he added.
Diller said he expected any lawsuits over AI to go all the way to the Supreme Court, due to the novelty of the questions at hand.
AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s sensation ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Microsoft’s Bing Chat are known as ‘large language models’ based on huge datasets of written text.
As the algorithms consume vast amounts of written language, they are trained to converse in a natural style, and can often synthesize knowledgeable-sounding articles on a wide range of topics.
But while ChatGPT has wowed some users with quick responses to questions, it has also caused distress for others with inaccuracies and bizarre fabrications.
In one disturbing case, ChatGPT apparently fabricated sexual harassment allegations against a George Washington University professor when asked to list examples of sexual harassment cases at US law schools.
The chatbot went so far as to cite a fictional Washington Post article about the fake case, which the newspaper confirmed it had never published.
AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s sensation ChatGPT has wowed some users with quick responses to questions, it has also caused distress for others with inaccuracies and bizarre fabrications
Diller is the chairman of media conglomerate IAC, which publishes Entertainment Weekly, People, and dozens of digital news and information sites (file photo)
Concerns about the rapid rise of AI chatbots have prompted a rapid push for tighter regulation from governments around the world.
On Tuesday, the Biden administration said it is seeking public comments on potential accountability measures for AI systems as questions loom about their impact on national security and education.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a Commerce Department agency that advises the White House on telecommunications and information policy, wants input as there is ‘growing regulatory interest’ in an AI ‘accountability mechanism.’
President Joe Biden last week said it remained to be seen whether AI is dangerous.
‘Tech companies have a responsibility, in my view, to make sure their products are safe before making them public,’ he said.
Days earlier, ChatGPT was banned in Italy for a suspected breach of privacy rules, prompting regulators in other European countries to study generative AI services more closely.
Also this week, China’s top internet regulator issued a sweeping new draft law requiring new AI products developed in China to undergo a security assessment and review to ensure they reflect ‘core socialist values’.
The Cyberspace Administration of China said it was seeking public input on the contents of the new regulations, which under Beijing’s highly centralized political system are virtually certain to become law.
By Daily Mail Online, April 12, 2023
