Reshaping the Future: Why Gen AI’s Creative Power Calls for Strategic Oversight

With the widespread emergence of OpenAI’s large language model-based ChatGPT platform in late 2022, a considerable amount of public attention and private capital have been showered on generative artificial intelligence over the past year. The technology has spawned no end of human speculation about AI’s potential, including around the provenance of its various verbal and visual outputs.

By now, exchanges with AI-powered language models have become common on social media, and it is easy enough to “ask” AI and get a plausible-sounding answer about anything, even AI.

PYMNTS: Do you think that you or I have IP rights to the content that you help me to generate?

ChatGPT: As an AI developed by OpenAI, I don’t hold any intellectual property rights to the content I generate. However, it’s important to note that intellectual property laws can vary significantly by jurisdiction… it’s advisable to consult with a legal expert familiar with intellectual property law.

ChatGPT is hardly wrong here, and just as the technology has evolved rapidly in recent years, laws are likely to adapt and follow. PYMNTS has interviewed leading experts in the field — human ones — to learn more about this technology and how, if at all, it should be regulated.

“Regulating Generative AI: The Six Storylines of 2023,” an eBook produced by CPI, a PYMNTS Company, highlights some of the most interesting stories of the year about the regulatory landscape of generative AI.

Balancing Innovation and Regulation

Most observers of generative AI underscore the need for regulators globally to adopt a nuanced approach to AI regulation, to maximize the potential of AI while addressing specific harms. In addition, observers point out that AI regulations need to be consistent or else they will stifle innovation.

Intellectual Property and AI

Perhaps not since the invention of copy-and-paste functions within word processing has a technology come with so many challenges to extant intellectual property regimes, underscoring the complexities in applying existing norms around copyright to AI-generated content — particularly given its evolving capabilities and varying legal interpretations across jurisdictions.

Diverse Applications and Regulatory Challenges

The diverse applications of generative AI make the technology an unprecedented challenge of establishing uniform regulations across different sectors. However, most advocates of generative AI recommend that regulators stress adaptable, technically informed frameworks that consider AI’s full range of potential impacts.

Whether AI will be able to reach its full potential depends on how regulators approach this powerful new technology. Download the eBook to read some of the most interesting stories of the year about the regulatory landscape of generative AI.