Why? 

With the many different generative AI services (such as AI chatbots and image generators) being powered by back-end neural networks / Large Language Models (LLMs) that have been trained using content from many different sources (without consent or payment), businesses that use their outputs face risks. For example, content creators like artists and writers may take legal action and seek compensation for LLMs using their work for training and which, as a result, can appear to copy their style in their output, thereby raising potential issues of copyright, lost income, devaluation of their work and more. Real examples include: 

– In January this year, illustrators Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, and Karla Ortiz filing a lawsuit against Midjourney Inc, DeviantArt Inc (DreamUp), and Stability AI, alleging that the text-to-image platforms have used their artworks, without consent or compensation, to train their algorithms. 

– In February this year, Getty Images filing a lawsuit against Stability AI, alleging that it had copied 12 million images (without consent or permission) to train its AI model. 

– Comedian Sarah Silverman joining lawsuits (in July 2023) accusing OpenAI and Meta of training their algorithms on her writing without permission.  

– GitHub facing litigation over accusations that they have allegedly scraped artists’ work for their AI products. 

– Microsoft, Microsoft’s GitHub, and OpenAI facing a lawsuit over alleged code copying by GitHub’s Copilot programming suggestion service. 

Although all these relate to lawsuits against the AI companies themselves and not their customers, the AI companies realise that this is also a risky area for customers because of how their AI models have been trained and where they could get their outputs from. 

What Are The AI Companies Saying In Their Defence? 

Examples of the kinds of arguments that AI companies being accused of copyright infringement are using in their defence include: 

– Some AI companies argue that the data used to train their models is under the principle of “fair use.” Fair use is a legal doctrine that promotes freedom of expression by allowing the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances. For example, the argument is that the vast amount of data used to train models like ChatGPT’s GPT-4 is processed in a transformative manner, which AI companies like OpenAI may argue means the output generated is distinct and not a direct reproduction of the original content. 

– Another defence revolves around the idea that AI models, especially large ones, aggregate and anonymise data to such an extent that individual sources become indistinguishable in the final model. This could mean that, while a model might be trained on vast amounts of text, it doesn’t technically “remember” or “store” specific books, articles, or other content in a retrievable form. 

– Yet another-counter argument by some AI companies is that while an AI tool has the ‘potential’ for misuse, it is up to the end-users to use it responsibly and ethically. This means that AI companies can argue that because they often provide guidelines and terms of service that outline acceptable uses of their technology, plus they actively try and discourage/prevent uses that could lead to copyright infringement, they are therefore (ostensibly) encouraging responsible use. 

Google’s Generative AI Indemnification 

Like Microsoft’s September announcement that it would defend its paying customers if they faced any copyright lawsuits for using Copilot, Google has just announced for its Google Cloud customers (who are pay-as-you-go) that it will be offering them its own AI indemnification protection. Google says that since it has embedded the always-on ‘Duet AI’ across its products, it needs to put its customers first and in the spirit of “shared fate” it will “assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved.” 

A Two-Pronged Approach 

Google says it will be taking a “two-pronged, industry-first approach” to this indemnification. This means that it will provide indemnity for both the training data used by Google for generative AI models, and for the generated output of its AI models – two layers of protection. 

In relation to the training data, which has been a source of many lawsuits for AI companies and could be an area of risk for Google’s customers, Google says its indemnity will cover “any allegations that Google’s use of training data to create any of our generative models utilised by a generative AI service, infringes a third party’s intellectual property right.” For business users of Google Cloud and its Duet AI, this means they’ll be protected regardless against third parties claiming copyright infringement as a result of Google’s use of training data. 

In relation to Google’s generated output indemnity, Google says it will apply to Duet AI in Google Workspace and to a range of Google Cloud services which it names as: 

– Duet AI in Workspace, including generated text in Google Docs and Gmail and generated images in Google Slides and Google Meet. 

– Duet AI in Google Cloud including Duet AI for assisted application development. 

– Vertex AI Search. 

– Vertex AI Conversation. 

– Vertex AI Text Embedding API / Multimodal Embeddings. 

– Visual Captioning / Visual Q&A on Vertex AI. 

– Codey APIs. 

Google says the generated output indemnity will mean that customers will be covered when using the above-named products against third-party IP claims, including copyright. 

One Caveat – Responsible Practices 

The one caveat that Google gives is that it won’t be able to cover customers where they have intentionally created or used generated output to infringe the rights of others. In other words, customers can’t expect Google to cover them if they ask Duet AI to deliberately copy another person’s work/content. 

The Difference 

Google says the difference between its AI indemnity protection and that offered by others (e.g. Microsoft), is essentially that it covers the training data aspect and not just the output of its generative AI tools. 

Bots Talking To Each Other? 

Interestingly, another twist in the complex and emerging world of generative AI last week were reports that companies are using “synthetic humans” (i.e. bots), each with characteristics drawn from ethnographic research on real people and using them to take part in conversations with other bots and real people to help generate new product and marketing ideas.

For example, Fantasy, a company that creates the ‘synthetic humans’ for conversations has reported that the benefits of using them include both the creation of novel ideas for clients, and prompting real humans included in their conversations to be more creative, i.e. stimulating more creative brainstorming. However, although it sounds useful, one aspect to consider is where the bots may get their ‘ideas’ from since they’re not able to actually think. Could they potentially use another company’s ideas?  

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Since the big AI investors like Google and Microsoft have committed so fully to AI and introduced ‘always-on’ AI assistants to services for their paying business customers (thereby encouraging them to use the AI without being able to restrict all the ways its used), it seems right that they’d need to offer some kind of cover, e.g. for any inadvertent copyright issues.

This is also a way for Google and Microsoft to reduce the risks and worries of their business customers (customer retention). Google, Microsoft, and other AI companies have also realised that they can feel relatively safe in offering indemnity at the moment as they know that many of the legal aspects of generative AI’s outputs and the training of its models are very complex areas that are still developing.

They may also feel that taking responsibility in this way at least gives them a chance to get involved in the cases, argue, and have a say in the cases (particularly with their financial and legal might) that will set the precedents that will guide the use of generative AI going forward. It’s also possible that many cases could take some time to be resolved due to the complexities of the new, developing, and often difficult to frontier of the digital world.

Some may also say that many of the services that Google’s offering indemnity for could mostly be classed as internal use services, whilst others may say that the company could be opening itself up to a potential tsunami of legal cases given the list of services it covers and the fact not all business users will be versed in what the nuances of responsible use in what is a developing area. Google and Microsoft may ultimately need to build-in legal protection and guidance of what can be used to the output of their generative AI. 

As a footnote, it would be interesting to see whether ‘synthetic human’ bots could be used to discuss and sort out many of the complex legal areas around AI use (AI discussing the legal aspects of itself with people – perhaps with lawyers) and whether AI will be used in research for any legal cases over copyright?

Generative AI is clearly a fast developing and fascinating area with both benefits and challenges.

The post Featured Article : Bots To Bots : Google Offers Protection From AI-Related Lawsuits appeared first on Mear Technology.

Duet 

Introduced in May this year, Duet AI in the Google Cloud is essentially Google’s answer to Microsoft’s Copilot. Duet is a paid-for, “always on” AI assistant and “collaborator” that is embedded within (and works across) all the Workspace apps including Gmail, Drive, Slides, and Docs, linking them together to provide value-adding synergies. 

The Benefits 

Google says Duet offers a “personalised and intent-driven cloud experience” and that, just as Copilot does with Microsoft’s apps, it provides cohesions of the apps and offers users a more holistic picture of the Google Cloud. Also, being able to ask Duet for help with anything related to Google Cloud’s apps on demand saves time and makes Google Cloud more accessible (and personal) to any type of user at any skill level. 

Examples Of What It Can Do 

Some examples of what Duet can do include: 

– Providing recommendations for building and operating apps with Google Cloud (Codey, one of the models that powers Duet AI has been pre-trained with the necessary code). For example, Duet AI for AppSheet lets users create business applications, connect their data, and build workflows into Google Workspace via natural language, all with no coding required and with users simply needing to describe their needs for apps in a chat guided by AI-powered prompts. 

– Giving code recommendations, generating full functions and code blocks, and identifying vulnerabilities and errors in the code, while suggesting fixes. 

– Creating slides for a presentation from Google Docs or make charts from data in spreadsheets. 

– Writing email responses (Duet is embedded in Gmail), summarising documents, checking grammar, and generating images, e.g. custom visuals in Slides. 

– Summarising long threads in Chat, providing automated meeting summaries in Meet, and allowing users to easily alter sound and visuals in Meet with studio look, studio lighting, and studio sound. Duet can also provide dynamic tiles (a named tile) and face detection for Meet attendees. 

– Giving real-time chat assistance on various topics, e.g. how to use certain cloud services or functions, and giving detailed implementation plans for cloud projects. 

When? 

From May it’s only been available to a limited number of Google Cloud users with others being invited to sign-up via Google Cloud’s AI Trusted Tester Program. However, Google announced on August 29 that Duet AI for Google Workspace is generally available now as a “no-cost trial”. 

How Much? 

Google says, for larger organisations, Duet is priced at $30 per user (on top of the existing Workspace subscription), the same price as Microsoft’s Copilot. 

Will It Really Work? 

Although Google Workspace has 3 billion users and more than 10 million paying customers, Google says Duet has so far been used by just thousands of companies and “more than a million trusted testers”. This means it’s still early days when you compare it to ChatGPT which was released 9 months before and has around 100 million users and had 1.6 billion visits to its site in June. That said, when Copilot was announced back in March, Microsoft said it was only being tested by 20 customers (although these included 8 within Fortune 500 enterprises).

The point is, however, anyone who’s used generative AI knows it can’t be trusted 100 per cent, and sometimes gets things wrong / makes things up so a reality check, the right prompts, and a good period of widespread use (and, therefore, more training) are needed to improve the outputs of AI work assistants like these. It should, however remembered, that Duet is mainly designed and focused specifically on working with Google Clouds apps so, hopefully, it should be relatively reliable.  

Plans For More 

As with Copilot, Google says there’s plans to expand the capabilities of Duet with Google’s Workspace. 

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

Google’s keen to points out that Duet enables users to “get back to the best parts of their jobs, to the parts that rely on human creativity, ingenuity, and expertise” by simplifying and speeding up the parts that would have taken time trawling through data and manually summarising and putting reports, visuals, and other things together.

Like Copilot, some of the main advantages of Duet are that it allows business users to get more value from the synergies of making more holistic use of many Google apps, i.e. it provides an instant, on-demand, flexible, and effective way to get much more out the most popular apps.

As with Microsoft’s Copilot, businesses using Google’s Duet can save time, be more creative with IT, boost productivity, upskill staff in IT (without spending on training), and get greater and perhaps new insights into their own business and operations.

All this, however, comes at the price of $30 per user which (as with Copilot which is the same price) has been criticised by some for being quite expensive. Since we’re still at the very early stages of businesses trying and using Copilot and now Duet, plus with businesses wanting to protect the source of any competitive advantages, it’s not easy to find any clear information of how much of a boost to productivity and profits either are, so making the decision to take the plunge may be based more on price which (at the moment) may not be particularly attractive. That said, Duet does offer some tempting capabilities and potential benefits to businesses.

The post Featured Article : Google’s Answer To Copilot appeared first on Mear Technology.