Generative artificial intelligence: training data: copyrighted materials.

Plain English Breakdown

The bill summary and digest do not provide specific details about enforcement mechanisms or penalties for non-compliance beyond allowing copyright owners to sue.

Generative AI Training Data and Copyrighted Materials

This law requires developers of generative artificial intelligence models to document the use of copyrighted materials in their training data and respond to requests from copyright owners for information about these materials.

What This Bill Does

• Requires developers of generative AI models to list any known copyrighted materials used to train their systems on their websites.
• Allows copyright holders to request detailed information about specific materials used by the developer.
• Gives developers up to 30 days to respond to these requests with a list of likely matching materials from their training data.
• Permits copyright owners to sue if they do not receive proper responses within the required timeframe.
• Exempts developers who use only publicly available, free data for training.

Who It Names or Affects

• Developers of generative AI models
• Copyright holders

Terms To Know

Generative artificial intelligence model

A type of AI system that creates new content based on patterns learned from existing data.

Covered materials

Copyrighted works used in the training process of generative AI models.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill does not specify what happens if a developer fails to comply with the requirements.
• It is unclear how this law will be enforced or monitored by authorities.
• There are no details on penalties for non-compliance beyond allowing copyright owners to sue.

Official Summary Text

AB 412, as amended, Bauer-Kahan.
Generative artificial intelligence: training data: copyrighted materials.
Existing federal law, through copyright, provides authors of original works of authorship, as defined, with certain rights and protections. Existing federal law generally gives the owner of the copyright the right to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords and the right to distribute copies or phonorecords of the work to the public. Existing federal law provides that sound recordings fixed before February 15, 1972, are not subject to copyright, but are subject to similar rights and protections under the Classics Protection and Access Act.
Existing law requires, on or before January 1, 2026, and before each time thereafter that a generative artificial intelligence system or service, as defined, or a substantial modification to a generative artificial intelligence system or service, released on or after January 1, 2022, is made available to
Californians for use, regardless of whether the terms of that use include compensation, a developer of the system or service to post on the developer’s internet website documentation, as specified, regarding the data used to train the generative artificial intelligence system or service.
This bill would require a developer of a generative artificial intelligence model to, among other things, document any covered materials that the developer knows were used
by the developer
to train the model. The bill would require the developer to make available a mechanism on the developer’s internet website allowing a rights owner to submit a request for information about the developer’s use of covered materials that would allow the rights owner to provide the developer with, among other things, registration, preregistration, or index numbers and fingerprints for one or
more covered materials. The bill
would
would, subject to specified exceptions,
require a developer to, within
7
30
days of receiving that request from the rights owner, assess whether the covered material represented by a fingerprint provided by the rights owner is likely to be present in the developer’s dataset and provide the rights owner with a list of their covered materials that were used to train the model and are likely to be present in the developer’s dataset, as specified. The bill would provide that each day following the
7-day
30-day
period that a developer fails to provide a rights owner with that information constitutes a discrete violation. The bill would authorize a rights owner
who complies with specified requirements for submitting a request
that is not provided with information according to these provisions to bring a civil action against the developer for specified relief. The bill would provide that the bill’s requirements do not apply to a
developer that makes all of the data used to train the
model
that meets certain criteria, including, among other things, being trained exclusively using data the developer makes
publicly available at no cost, as specified. The bill would define various
terms for these purposes.

Current Bill Text

Download Bill PDF