Google joins Microsoft to protect users from AI copyright lawsuits

Google ha anunciado que ofrecerá protección legal a sus clientes de la nube que utilicen sus servicios de inteligencia artificial (IA), tras una medida similar de Microsoft a principios de este año. La compañía dijo que indemnizará a los usuarios de Google Cloud Platform (GCP) por cualquier reclamo relacionado con la infracción de derechos de propiedad intelectual (DPI) que surja de su uso de las tecnologías de inteligencia artificial de Google.

This means that if a third party sues a GCP customer for using Google’s artificial intelligence services, such as its natural language processing, computer vision or speech recognition tools, Google will cover the legal costs and damages awarded, up to a certain limit. The limit varies depending on the type and amount of AI services used by the customer, but can range from $500,000 to $1.5 million per customer per year.

Google said this initiative is part of its commitment to «responsible AI» and aims to provide «peace of mind» to its customers who want to take advantage of the benefits of AI without worrying about potential legal risks. The company also said it will continue to invest in research and development to ensure that its AI services are reliable, fair and ethical.

Google’s announcement comes after Microsoft introduced a similar indemnification policy for its Azure customers in January 2021. Microsoft said it will defend and indemnify Azure customers facing lawsuits over the use of its artificial intelligence services, such as Azure Cognitive Services, Azure Machine Learning or Azure Bot Service. Microsoft’s policy also covers legal costs and damages up to a certain limit, which depends on the customer’s subscription level and the type of AI service used.

Both Google and Microsoft are among the leading providers of cloud-based AI services, which enable businesses and organizations to access advanced AI capabilities without having to build their own infrastructure or expertise. However, the use of AI also poses some challenges and uncertainties, especially with regard to the ownership and protection of intellectual property rights related to AI-generated or AI-assisted content or products.

According to a report by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), there is no clear consensus or international framework on how to address intellectual property rights issues arising from AI. For example, it is not clear who owns the rights to an AI-generated work, such as a text, image or song, or whether such a work may be protected by copyright. Similarly, it is unclear who is liable for any harm or damage caused by an AI system or application, such as a faulty diagnosis, biased recommendation or misleading translation.

By offering indemnification policies, Google and Microsoft are trying to address some of these uncertainties and provide more confidence and security to their cloud customers using their artificial intelligence services. However, these policies also have some limitations and exclusions, such as not covering claims related to patent infringement, misappropriation of trade secrets or privacy violations. In addition, these policies do not resolve the underlying legal and ethical issues surrounding the use of AI in various settings and contexts.

Therefore, while the initiatives by Google and Microsoft are welcome steps to foster greater trust and accountability in the AI ecosystem, they are not sufficient to ensure that AI is used in a legal and ethical manner. Further dialogue and collaboration among stakeholders, including policymakers, regulators, researchers, developers, users and civil society, is still needed to establish clear and consistent rules and standards for AI governance.

Google Cloud and Workspace customers using the company’s generative AI tools can rest assured that Google will protect them from any potential legal issues arising from the use of these tools.

That’s what Neal Suggs, vice president of legal for Google Cloud, and Phil Venables, vice president of IT Security and CISO for Google Cloud, announced in a blog post this week.

They wrote: «We want to make it clear to our customers: if you face any legal challenges based on copyright infringement, we will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved.»

This is similar to what Microsoft promised regarding its Copilot AI tool last month, as well as Adobe and Shutterstock for its enterprise customers.

These protections are a response to concerns that AI may inadvertently copy or reuse copyrighted works and expose the user or company to legal action. For example, Google was sued in a class action lawsuit earlier this year for allegedly using public data to train its Bard chatbot.

Google’s protections cover several products, such as Google Workspace, Google Cloud and Vertex AI Platform. They offer indemnification to customers on two aspects: training data and generated results.

On the training data side, Google and other chatbot developers have faced criticism from authors, artists, publications and others for using their online content to train their AI chatbots. And while Google already has third-party intellectual property indemnification, Google says customers have asked for «explicit clarifications» regarding Google’s AI tools.