The Federal Trade Commission staff recently provided critical takeaways from an October 2023 public virtual roundtable on generative AI. The roundtable centered around the impacts of generative AI on various creative fields and served as a forum for professionals to express their concerns and experiences. Notably, it appears many of the expressed concerns could be traced back to intellectual property rights.

The Staff report focused on several key topics, as detailed by a press release issued by the FTC:

• Collection without Consent: Creative professionals noted how their past work was being collected and used without their consent or awareness to train generative AI models, including by using expansive interpretations of prior contractual agreements.
• Nondisclosure: Participants also expressed concern that they might not even know that their works are being used because many AI developers do not publicly disclose what works have been included in training data.
• Competing for work with AI: Participants said that generative AI outputs are starting to appear in the venues where creative professionals compete for work, potentially making it more difficult for consumers and potential publishers to find human-made work.
• Style mimicry: Some participants expressed concerns about generative AI tools being used to mimic their own unique styles, brands, voices and likenesses, which could allow strangers and former clients to create knockoffs including synthetic voices and images.
• Fake endorsements: Participants said generative AI has been used to create false depictions of artists selling products that they never endorsed or used by trolls to generate offensive content using their cloned voices.

FTC Press Release, published Dec. 18, 2023.

The FTC report underscores the need for a legal framework that accommodates the unique challenges posed by AI, particularly in respecting the intellectual property of artists and creators. The FTC is just one of the federal agencies tackling the issue of AI regulation. Accordingly, be on the lookout for more reports on AI that offer a glimpse of potential U.S. regulatory trends coming in the future.