Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk call to delete IP laws, but artists are pushing back

As artists fight to protect their works from being used to train AI models, Jack Dorsey wants to eliminate intellectual property (IP) laws altogether. Elon Musk agrees.

On Friday, the cofounder of X (then Twitter) and Block (then Square) posted on X, "delete all IP law." Elon Musk, the current leader of X, chimed in to comment, "I agree."

Taken together, these two statements contain just six words, yet they could have big implications for the future of intellectual property in the AI era.

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Earlier that Friday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was interviewed by TED's Chris Anderson at its eponymous conference. Anderson showed Altman an AI-generated cartoon strip of Charlie Brown, saying, "it looks like IP theft." Anderson asked whether OpenAI had a licensing deal with the Peanuts estate.

Altman didn't directly answer the question but instead affirmed that OpenAI wants "to build tools that lift [the creative spirit of humanity] up," and then added, "we probably do need to figure out some sort of new model around economics of creative output."

Dorsey, Musk, and Altman's words underscore a common belief amongst tech entrepreneurs that copyright laws need to evolve to account for the potential of generative AI. Already, both OpenAI and Google have openly lobbied the U.S. government to allow AI models to train on protected works such as movies, articles, and music. They want such use to fall under the fair use legal doctrine, with OpenAI calling it a matter of "national security."

But to many artists and advocacy groups, any call to "delete all IP laws" sounds like a direct attack on their rights. These artists argue that AI companies are both profiting from and competing with their work, in violation of existing copyright laws. Over 50,000 artists including Thom Yorke, James Patterson, and Julianne Moore recently signed an open letter, which stated, "the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

And a letter signed by Hollywood creatives including Ron Howard, Paul McCartney, and Cynthia Erivo was sent to the White House in protest of Google and OpenAI's lobbying for deregulating the AI industry.

"Intellectual property law is rooted in the U.S. Constitution as a tool to promote creativity, not suppress it. It ensures that those who contribute to cultural and scientific progress are recognized, protected, and compensated," said Atreya Mathur, director of Legal Research at the Center for Art Law, in an email to Mashable. "Elimination of such laws would ignore that very purpose and devalue the labor and rights of creators, including those whose work powers these technologies."

And on X, Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of Fairly Trained, which advocates for ethically sourced training data, said, "Tech execs declaring all-out war on creators who don’t want their life’s work pillaged for profit."

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Other X users pointed out that Dorsey, who became a billionaire by founding his companies, did so with the help of IP protections: "Everybody becomes a free-market libertarian once they make their bag."

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As tech heavyweights seek a legal blessing for AI's "freedom to learn," they'll have to face huge swaths of the entertainment industry first.