Webinar to Address AI and Copyright Licensing

- This is the second webinar in a series co-sponsored by The Next Solutions Group and the Copyright Alliance, following a January 2026 event titled "AI, Intellectual Property, and the Emerging Legal Landscape," indicating a sustained educational push aimed at journalists covering the topic. - A central legal issue is the "fair use" doctrine; numerous lawsuits have been filed by copyright holders against AI companies for using their works as training data. A February 2025 federal court decision in *Thomson Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence* rejected a fair use defense for training an AI on copyrighted legal summaries. - The U.S. Copyright Office has established that works generated entirely by AI cannot be copyrighted because they lack human authorship, a foundational principle upheld in federal court. However, the office allows copyright for human-authored works created *with the assistance* of AI, requiring filers to disclaim the AI-generated portions. - The European Union's AI Act imposes specific obligations on providers of general-purpose AI models, requiring them to publish detailed summaries of their training content and implement policies that respect copyright holders' right to opt out of text and data mining. - In contrast to the litigious U.S. environment, Japan amended its copyright law to permit the use of copyrighted works for AI training and development, provided the goal is not to replicate the original work's expressive content. - The host, the National Press Foundation, has its own published principles for AI use, stating all its content "originates with human intellect and is completed with human oversight" and requires human verification for all AI-generated information. - Panelists for the event include professors specializing in media and technology law from the University of Southern California and information technology and public policy from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a senior media reporter from Digiday.