copyright laundering

English

Etymology

By analogy with money laundering, which attempts to disguise the source of illegally acquired funds.

Noun

copyright laundering (uncountable)

1. (derogatory, neologism) The transformation of copyrighted material, for example by means of artificial intelligence, to produce a derivative work that cannot be clearly identified as such.
   • 2022 December 4, Alex Hern, “AI bot ChatGPT stuns academics with essay-writing skills and usability”, in The Guardian, London, page 22:

     The AI is trained on a huge sample of text taken from the internet, generally without explicit permission from the authors of the material used. That has led to controversy, with some arguing that the technology is most useful for “copyright laundering” — making works derivative of existing material without breaking copyright.

   • 2023 November 25, Echo (username), “Law firms are throwing legal spaghetti at the wall to take down gen-AI, but judges are so far unimpressed”, in The Passive Voice‎^[1], comment:

     As already pointed out, they used one such fair use/fair dealing exemption as a form of copyright laundering when it was actually for a for-profit purposes.

   • 2024 January 21, James Trapper, quoting court documents, “‘We need to come together’: British artists team up to fight AI image-generating software”, in The Observer, London:

     “Though [the] defendants like to describe their AI image products in lofty terms, the reality is grubbier and nastier: AI image products are primarily valued as copyright-laundering devices, promising customers the benefits of art without the costs of artists,” the complaint says.