New Bill  Seeks to Protect Artists, Songwriters, and Journalists From Unauthorized AI Use of Content

A bipartisan group of senators proposed a new AI bill to protect the content of artists, songwriters, and journalists. With this move, content within these categories cannot be used to train AI models or to generate AI content without the owner’s consent.

The bill, called the Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED Act), also seeks to make it convenient to identify AI-generated content and combat the rise of harmful deepfakes. 

Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Senate AI Working Group member Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Commerce Committee member Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) authored the bill. 

As per the bill, companies that develop AI tools must allow users to attach content provenance information to their content within two years.

Content provenance information refers to machine-readable information that documents the origin of digital content, such as photos and news articles.

According to the bill, content provenance information cannot be used to train AI models or generate AI content. 

The bill is designed to give content owners the ability to protect their work and set the terms of use for their content, including compensation. Moreover, content owners can sue platforms that use their content without their permission or have meddled with content provenance information. 

The COPIED Act needs the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create guidelines and standards for content provenance information, watermarking, and synthetic content detection. These standards will determine if content is AI-generated or altered with AI and the origin of the content.

In a press release, Senator Cantwell said, “The bipartisan COPIED Act I introduced with Senator Blackburn and Senator Heinrich will provide much-needed transparency around AI-generated content.”

She added, “The COPIED Act will also put creators, including local journalists, artists, and musicians, back in control of their content with a provenance and watermark process that I think is very much needed.”

SAG-AFTRA, the National Music Publishers’ Association, The Seattle Times, the Songwriters Guild of America, and the Artist Rights Alliance are in support of the bill, among others.