That’s not the only uncertainty at play. Just last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson—a staunch Trump supporter—said that Republicans “probably will” repeal the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which is a Biden initiative to spur domestic semiconductor chip production, among other aims. Trump has previously spoken out against the bill. After getting some pushback on his comments from Democrats, Johnson said he would like to “streamline” the CHIPS Act instead, according to The Associated Press.
Then there’s the Elon Musk factor. The tech billionaire spent tens of millions through a political action committee supporting Trump’s campaign and has been angling for regulatory influence in the new administration. His AI company, xAI, which makes the Grok-2 language model, stands alongside his other ventures—Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, and X (formerly Twitter)—as businesses that could see regulatory changes in his favor under a new administration.
What might take its place
If Trump strips away federal regulation of AI, state governments may step in to fill any federal regulatory gaps. For example, in March, Tennessee enacted protections against AI voice cloning, and in May, Colorado created a tiered system for AI deployment oversight. In September, California passed multiple AI safety bills, one requiring companies to publish details about their AI training methods and a contentious anti-deepfake bill aimed at protecting the likenesses of actors.
So far, it’s unclear what Trump’s policies on AI might represent besides “deregulate whenever possible.” During his campaign, Trump promised to support AI development centered on “free speech and human flourishing,” though he provided few specifics. He has called AI “very dangerous” and spoken about its high energy requirements.
Trump allies at the America First Policy Institute have previously stated they want to “Make America First in AI” with a new Trump executive order, which still only exists as a speculative draft, to reduce regulations on AI and promote a series of “Manhattan Projects” to advance military AI capabilities.
During his previous administration, Trump signed AI executive orders that focused on research institutes and directing federal agencies to prioritize AI development while mandating that federal agencies “protect civil liberties, privacy, and American values.”
But with a different AI environment these days in the wake of ChatGPT and media-reality-warping image synthesis models, those earlier orders don’t likely point the way to future positions on the topic. For more details, we’ll have to wait and see what unfolds.
Enlarge/ A man peers over a glass partition, seeking transparency.
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) recently unveiled its latest draft definition for “open source AI,” aiming to clarify the ambiguous use of the term in the fast-moving field. The move comes as some companies like Meta release trained AI language model weights and code with usage restrictions while using the “open source” label. This has sparked intense debates among free-software advocates about what truly constitutes “open source” in the context of AI.
For instance, Meta’s Llama 3 model, while freely available, doesn’t meet the traditional open source criteria as defined by the OSI for software because it imposes license restrictions on usage due to company size or what type of content is produced with the model. The AI image generator Flux is another “open” model that is not truly open source. Because of this type of ambiguity, we’ve typically described AI models that include code or weights with restrictions or lack accompanying training data with alternative terms like “open-weights” or “source-available.”
To address the issue formally, the OSI—which is well-known for its advocacy for open software standards—has assembled a group of about 70 participants, including researchers, lawyers, policymakers, and activists. Representatives from major tech companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon also joined the effort. The group’s current draft (version 0.0.9) definition of open source AI emphasizes “four fundamental freedoms” reminiscent of those defining free software: giving users of the AI system permission to use it for any purpose without permission, study how it works, modify it for any purpose, and share with or without modifications.
By establishing clear criteria for open source AI, the organization hopes to provide a benchmark against which AI systems can be evaluated. This will likely help developers, researchers, and users make more informed decisions about the AI tools they create, study, or use.
Truly open source AI may also shed light on potential software vulnerabilities of AI systems, since researchers will be able to see how the AI models work behind the scenes. Compare this approach with an opaque system such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which is more than just a GPT-4o large language model with a fancy interface—it’s a proprietary system of interlocking models and filters, and its precise architecture is a closely guarded secret.
OSI’s project timeline indicates that a stable version of the “open source AI” definition is expected to be announced in October at the All Things Open 2024 event in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Permissionless innovation”
In a press release from May, the OSI emphasized the importance of defining what open source AI really means. “AI is different from regular software and forces all stakeholders to review how the Open Source principles apply to this space,” said Stefano Maffulli, executive director of the OSI. “OSI believes that everybody deserves to maintain agency and control of the technology. We also recognize that markets flourish when clear definitions promote transparency, collaboration and permissionless innovation.”
The organization’s most recent draft definition extends beyond just the AI model or its weights, encompassing the entire system and its components.
For an AI system to qualify as open source, it must provide access to what the OSI calls the “preferred form to make modifications.” This includes detailed information about the training data, the full source code used for training and running the system, and the model weights and parameters. All these elements must be available under OSI-approved licenses or terms.
Notably, the draft doesn’t mandate the release of raw training data. Instead, it requires “data information”—detailed metadata about the training data and methods. This includes information on data sources, selection criteria, preprocessing techniques, and other relevant details that would allow a skilled person to re-create a similar system.
The “data information” approach aims to provide transparency and replicability without necessarily disclosing the actual dataset, ostensibly addressing potential privacy or copyright concerns while sticking to open source principles, though that particular point may be up for further debate.
“The most interesting thing about [the definition] is that they’re allowing training data to NOT be released,” said independent AI researcher Simon Willison in a brief Ars interview about the OSI’s proposal. “It’s an eminently pragmatic approach—if they didn’t allow that, there would be hardly any capable ‘open source’ models.”
On Wednesday, US Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), and Thom Tillis (R-NC) introduced the Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act of 2024. The bipartisan legislation, up for consideration in the US Senate, aims to protect individuals from unauthorized AI-generated replicas of their voice or likeness.
The NO FAKES Act would create legal recourse for people whose digital representations are created without consent. It would hold both individuals and companies liable for producing, hosting, or sharing these unauthorized digital replicas, including those created by generative AI. Due to generative AI technology that has become mainstream in the past two years, creating audio or image media fakes of people has become fairly trivial, with easy photorealistic video replicas likely next to arrive.
In a press statement, Coons emphasized the importance of protecting individual rights in the age of AI. “Everyone deserves the right to own and protect their voice and likeness, no matter if you’re Taylor Swift or anyone else,” he said, referring to a widely publicized deepfake incident involving the musical artist in January. “Generative AI can be used as a tool to foster creativity, but that can’t come at the expense of the unauthorized exploitation of anyone’s voice or likeness.”
The introduction of the NO FAKES Act follows the Senate’s passage of the DEFIANCE Act, which allows victims of sexual deepfakes to sue for damages.
In addition to the Swift saga, over the past few years, we’ve seen AI-powered scams involving fake celebrity endorsements, the creation of misleading political content, and situations where school kids have used AI tech to create pornographic deepfakes of classmates. Recently, X CEO Elon Musk shared a video that featured an AI-generated voice of Vice President Kamala Harris saying things she didn’t say in real life.
These incidents, in addition to concerns about actors’ likenesses being replicated without permission, have created an increasing sense of urgency among US lawmakers, who want to limit the impact of unauthorized digital likenesses. Currently, certain types of AI-generated deepfakes are already illegal due to a patchwork of federal and state laws, but this new act hopes to unify likeness regulation around the concept of “digital replicas.”
To protect a person’s digital likeness, the NO FAKES Act introduces a “digital replication right” that gives individuals exclusive control over the use of their voice or visual likeness in digital replicas. This right extends 10 years after death, with possible five-year extensions if actively used. It can be licensed during life and inherited after death, lasting up to 70 years after an individual’s death. Along the way, the bill defines what it considers to be a “digital replica”:
DIGITAL REPLICA.-The term “digital replica” means a newly created, computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable as the voice or visual likeness of an individual that- (A) is embodied in a sound recording, image, audiovisual work, including an audiovisual work that does not have any accompanying sounds, or transmission- (i) in which the actual individual did not actually perform or appear; or (ii) that is a version of a sound recording, image, or audiovisual work in which the actual individual did perform or appear, in which the fundamental character of the performance or appearance has been materially altered; and (B) does not include the electronic reproduction, use of a sample of one sound recording or audiovisual work into another, remixing, mastering, or digital remastering of a sound recording or audiovisual work authorized by the copyright holder.
(There’s some irony in the mention of an “audiovisual work that does not have any accompanying sounds.”)
Since this bill bans types of artistic expression, the NO FAKES Act includes provisions that aim to balance IP protection with free speech. It provides exclusions for recognized First Amendment protections, such as documentaries, biographical works, and content created for purposes of comment, criticism, or parody.
In some ways, those exceptions could create a very wide protection gap that may be difficult to enforce without specific court decisions on a case-by-case basis. But without them, the NO FAKES Act could potentially stifle Americans’ constitutionally protected rights of free expression since the concept of “digital replicas” outlined in the bill includes any “computer-generated, highly realistic” digital likeness of a real person, whether AI-generated or not. For example, is a photorealistic Photoshop illustration of a person “computer-generated?” Similar questions may lead to uncertainty in enforcement.
Wide support from entertainment industry
So far, the NO FAKES Act has gained support from various entertainment industry groups, including Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association, and the Recording Academy. These organizations have been actively seeking protections against unauthorized AI re-creations.
The bill has also been endorsed by entertainment companies such as The Walt Disney Company, Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, Sony Music, the Independent Film & Television Alliance, William Morris Endeavor, Creative Arts Agency, the Authors Guild, and Vermillio.
Several tech companies, including IBM and OpenAI, have also backed the NO FAKES Act. Anna Makanju, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, said in a statement that the act would protect creators and artists from improper impersonation. “OpenAI is pleased to support the NO FAKES Act, which would protect creators and artists from unauthorized digital replicas of their voices and likenesses,” she said.
In a statement, Coons highlighted the collaborative effort behind the bill’s development. “I am grateful for the bipartisan partnership of Senators Blackburn, Klobuchar, and Tillis and the support of stakeholders from across the entertainment and technology industries as we work to find the balance between the promise of AI and protecting the inherent dignity we all have in our own personhood.”
Enlarge/ The California State Capitol Building in Sacramento.
California’s “Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act” (a.k.a. SB-1047) has led to a flurry of headlines and debate concerning the overall “safety” of large artificial intelligence models. But critics are concerned that the bill’s overblown focus on existential threats by future AI models could severely limit research and development for more prosaic, non-threatening AI uses today.
SB-1047, introduced by State Senator Scott Wiener, passed the California Senate in May with a 32-1 vote and seems well positioned for a final vote in the State Assembly in August. The text of the bill requires companies behind sufficiently large AI models (currently set at $100 million in training costs and the rough computing power implied by those costs today) to put testing procedures and systems in place to prevent and respond to “safety incidents.”
The bill lays out a legalistic definition of those safety incidents that in turn focuses on defining a set of “critical harms” that an AI system might enable. That includes harms leading to “mass casualties or at least $500 million of damage,” such as “the creation or use of chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapon” (hello, Skynet?) or “precise instructions for conducting a cyberattack… on critical infrastructure.” The bill also alludes to “other grave harms to public safety and security that are of comparable severity” to those laid out explicitly.
An AI model’s creator can’t be held liable for harm caused through the sharing of “publicly accessible” information from outside the model—simply asking an LLM to summarize The Anarchist’s Cookbook probably wouldn’t put it in violation of the law, for instance. Instead, the bill seems most concerned with future AIs that could come up with “novel threats to public safety and security.” More than a human using an AI to brainstorm harmful ideas, SB-1047 focuses on the idea of an AI “autonomously engaging in behavior other than at the request of a user” while acting “with limited human oversight, intervention, or supervision.”
Enlarge/ Would California’s new bill have stopped WOPR?
To prevent this straight-out-of-science-fiction eventuality, anyone training a sufficiently large model must “implement the capability to promptly enact a full shutdown” and have policies in place for when such a shutdown would be enacted, among other precautions and tests. The bill also focuses at points on AI actions that would require “intent, recklessness, or gross negligence” if performed by a human, suggesting a degree of agency that does not exist in today’s large language models.
Attack of the killer AI?
This kind of language in the bill likely reflects the particular fears of its original drafter, Center for AI Safety (CAIS) co-founder Dan Hendrycks. In a 2023 Time Magazine piece, Hendrycks makes the maximalist existential argument that “evolutionary pressures will likely ingrain AIs with behaviors that promote self-preservation” and lead to “a pathway toward being supplanted as the earth’s dominant species.'”
If Hendrycks is right, then legislation like SB-1047 seems like a common-sense precaution—indeed, it might not go far enough. Supporters of the bill, including AI luminaries Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio, agree with Hendrycks’ assertion that the bill is a necessary step to prevent potential catastrophic harm from advanced AI systems.
“AI systems beyond a certain level of capability can pose meaningful risks to democracies and public safety,” wrote Bengio in an endorsement of the bill. “Therefore, they should be properly tested and subject to appropriate safety measures. This bill offers a practical approach to accomplishing this, and is a major step toward the requirements that I’ve recommended to legislators.”
“If we see any power-seeking behavior here, it is not of AI systems, but of AI doomers.
Tech policy expert Dr. Nirit Weiss-Blatt
However, critics argue that AI policy shouldn’t be led by outlandish fears of future systems that resemble science fiction more than current technology. “SB-1047 was originally drafted by non-profit groups that believe in the end of the world by sentient machine, like Dan Hendrycks’ Center for AI Safety,” Daniel Jeffries, a prominent voice in the AI community, told Ars. “You cannot start from this premise and create a sane, sound, ‘light touch’ safety bill.”
“If we see any power-seeking behavior here, it is not of AI systems, but of AI doomers,” added tech policy expert Nirit Weiss-Blatt. “With their fictional fears, they try to pass fictional-led legislation, one that, according to numerous AI experts and open source advocates, could ruin California’s and the US’s technological advantage.”
On Thursday, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously consented to adopt what some call the first global resolution on AI, reports Reuters. The resolution aims to foster the protection of personal data, enhance privacy policies, ensure close monitoring of AI for potential risks, and uphold human rights. It emerged from a proposal by the United States and received backing from China and 121 other countries.
Being a nonbinding agreement and thus effectively toothless, the resolution seems broadly popular in the AI industry. On X, Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith wrote, “We fully support the @UN’s adoption of the comprehensive AI resolution. The consensus reached today marks a critical step towards establishing international guardrails for the ethical and sustainable development of AI, ensuring this technology serves the needs of everyone.”
The resolution, titled “Seizing the opportunities of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems for sustainable development,” resulted from three months of negotiation, and the stakeholders involved seem pleased at the level of international cooperation. “We’re sailing in choppy waters with the fast-changing technology, which means that it’s more important than ever to steer by the light of our values,” one senior US administration official told Reuters, highlighting the significance of this “first-ever truly global consensus document on AI.”
In the UN, adoption by consensus means that all members agree to adopt the resolution without a vote. “Consensus is reached when all Member States agree on a text, but it does not mean that they all agree on every element of a draft document,” writes the UN in a FAQ found online. “They can agree to adopt a draft resolution without a vote, but still have reservations about certain parts of the text.”
The initiative joins a series of efforts by governments worldwide to influence the trajectory of AI development following the launch of ChatGPT and GPT-4, and the enormous hype raised by certain members of the tech industry in a public worldwide campaign waged last year. Critics fear that AI may undermine democratic processes, amplify fraudulent activities, or contribute to significant job displacement, among other issues. The resolution seeks to address the dangers associated with the irresponsible or malicious application of AI systems, which the UN says could jeopardize human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Resistance from nations such as Russia and China was anticipated, and US officials acknowledged the presence of “lots of heated conversations” during the negotiation process, according to Reuters. However, they also emphasized successful engagement with these countries and others typically at odds with the US on various issues, agreeing on a draft resolution that sought to maintain a delicate balance between promoting development and safeguarding human rights.
The new UN agreement may be the first “global” agreement, in the sense of having the participation of every UN country, but it wasn’t the first multi-state international AI agreement. That honor seems to fall to the Bletchley Declaration signed in November by the 28 nations attending the UK’s first AI Summit.
Also in November, the US, Britain, and other nations unveiled an agreement focusing on the creation of AI systems that are “secure by design” to protect against misuse by rogue actors. Europe is slowly moving forward with provisional agreements to regulate AI and is close to implementing the world’s first comprehensive AI regulations. Meanwhile, the US government still lacks consensus on legislative action related to AI regulation, with the Biden administration advocating for measures to mitigate AI risks while enhancing national security.
Enlarge/ Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of News Media Alliance; Professor Jeff Jarvis, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism; Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of National Association of Broadcasters; and Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, are sworn in during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism.”
Getty Images
On Wednesday, news industry executives urged Congress for legal clarification that using journalism to train AI assistants like ChatGPT is not fair use, as claimed by companies such as OpenAI. Instead, they would prefer a licensing regime for AI training content that would force Big Tech companies to pay for content in a method similar to rights clearinghouses for music.
The plea for action came during a US Senate Judiciary Committee hearing titled “Oversight of A.I.: The Future of Journalism,” chaired by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, with Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri also playing a large role in the proceedings. Last year, the pair of senators introduced a bipartisan framework for AI legislation and held a series of hearings on the impact of AI.
Blumenthal described the situation as an “existential crisis” for the news industry and cited social media as a cautionary tale for legislative inaction about AI. “We need to move more quickly than we did on social media and learn from our mistakes in the delay there,” he said.
Companies like OpenAI have admitted that vast amounts of copyrighted material are necessary to train AI large language models, but they claim their use is transformational and covered under fair use precedents of US copyright law. Currently, OpenAI is negotiating licensing content from some news providers and striking deals, but the executives in the hearing said those efforts are not enough, highlighting closing newsrooms across the US and dropping media revenues while Big Tech’s profits soar.
“Gen AI cannot replace journalism,” said Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch in his opening statement. (Condé Nast is the parent company of Ars Technica.) “Journalism is fundamentally a human pursuit, and it plays an essential and irreplaceable role in our society and our democracy.” Lynch said that generative AI has been built with “stolen goods,” referring to the use of AI training content from news outlets without authorization. “Gen AI companies copy and display our content without permission or compensation in order to build massive commercial businesses that directly compete with us.”
Enlarge/ Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law during a hearing on “Artificial Intelligence and The Future Of Journalism.”
Getty Images
In addition to Lynch, the hearing featured three other witnesses: Jeff Jarvis, a veteran journalism professor and pundit; Danielle Coffey, the president and CEO of News Media Alliance; and Curtis LeGeyt, president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters.
Coffey also shared concerns about generative AI using news material to create competitive products. “These outputs compete in the same market, with the same audience, and serve the same purpose as the original articles that feed the algorithms in the first place,” she said.
When Sen. Hawley asked Lynch what kind of legislation might be needed to fix the problem, Lynch replied, “I think quite simply, if Congress could clarify that the use of our content and other publisher content for training and output of AI models is not fair use, then the free market will take care of the rest.”
Lynch used the music industry as a model: “You think about millions of artists, millions of ultimate consumers consuming that content, there have been models that have been set up, ASCAP, BMI, CSAC, GMR, these collective rights organizations to simplify the content that’s being used.”
Curtis LeGeyt, CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, said that TV broadcast journalists are also affected by generative AI. “The use of broadcasters’ news content in AI models without authorization diminishes our audience’s trust and our reinvestment in local news,” he said. “Broadcasters have already seen numerous examples where content created by our journalists has been ingested and regurgitated by AI bots with little or no attribution.”
