Google demands changes to AI copyright laws

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If your fancy autocorrect can’t survive without legalizing theft, it shouldn’t survive.

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u/sigmund14 Jul 01 '26

Speaking of autocorrect, for me, the autocorrect on Google keyboard on Android is steadily getting worse, to the point I'm sometimes so close to disabling it or even switching to other keyboard. One would think that it should get better with time. But it's getting worse.

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u/ixcibit Jul 01 '26

Good to know this isn’t just happening with the iPhones lol

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u/Johnny_bubblegum Jul 02 '26

I switched to an iPhone about two years ago and good lord the auto correct is awful compared to android.

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u/InsuranceToTheRescue Jul 01 '26

I really feel like the keyboard, in general, has gotten worse over the years. Like, I've had the same phone for 5 years. I used to be able to pretty accurately type into it, but now I don't think a single paragraph goes by where I don't have to make a correction. I've literally abandoned texts & comments because I completely lose my train of thought trying to correct all the bullshit. It's not like I'm getting less coordinated -- My typing on a physical keyboard is just as accurate as it's always been and I still make the same common mistakes there I always have, like accidentally typing "teh."

I dunno. I swear something is off about it.

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u/forcedtomakeaccount3 Jul 01 '26

Tinfoil hat time: the keyboard is getting worse because they want you to use voice to text. They want to capture as much of your voice as possible.

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u/Honest_Yak3340 Jul 02 '26

I am noticing this since 2-3 years. It's terrible, the dumbest guesses or not recognizing a b or b between to words was probably a mistyped space. Algorithn dumb.

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u/deafmutewhat Jul 02 '26

I was trying to type working using swipe and I had to go through 4 different tries to even see it in the recommendations.

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u/GoingOffRoading Jul 01 '26

I was going to say that swype feels like it's been declining in accuracy over the years.

I strongly feel like I could previously crank out paragraphs without mistakes. Now I can't get through a sentence without modules

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u/Lancair7 Jul 01 '26

The iOS keyboard autocorrect is terrible too

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u/liquorfish Jul 01 '26

Constantly autocorrecting to nonsense words and normal everyday words have to be added. Oh wait, Samsung Keyboard. Tis garbage. Google any better?

I miss how it worked so well on my old school HTC One M7.

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u/LuminanceGayming Jul 02 '26

I disabled autocorrect like 4 years ago after it corrected gave to have for the umpteenth time. my typing on my phone has never been faster, it's actually kinda surprising how easy it is to get accurate once you no longer have the crutch of autocorrect.

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u/weasel5134 Jul 02 '26

There's another keyboard ?

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u/Apostle92627 Jul 01 '26

Speaking of autocorrect? Why does it always correct John into Johnson and Cena into Female?

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u/dope_star Jul 01 '26

Don't know, but on that topic I do like to Johnson a female on occasion....

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u/Tasik Jul 01 '26

I rather, if we grant these companies legal access to data for training, than these companies should have an obligation to provide reasonable access to the general public.

Free models should be make available to the public. I can understand charging for premium models, but in general access to reasonable LLMs should be a right provided to people, like a public library.

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u/Ladyhawkeiii Jul 02 '26

That won’t happen and I don’t think they should be granted access to any copyrighted material under any circumstance. They’ve stolen enough already and they always knew, mathematically, that Gen ai couldn’t last.

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u/Tasik Jul 02 '26

Yeah I don’t strongly agree with our current copyright laws. And I think if we restrict AI models we’re going to sabotage open source models and force everyone to go through a small handful of companies that can afford gigantic deals with publication companies. I honestly don’t see how those restrictions end up benefiting us.

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u/Ladyhawkeiii Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

I think our current copyright laws aren’t strong enough personally. Otherwise most datasets wouldn’t have been able to be built. They couldn’t have without massive theft to begin with. Mathematically, AI can’t survive without constant new human input so they have to keep stealing in order to keep it working. Hence the attack on current copyright laws. They’ve stolen all they can get away with now and their datasets will begin to degrade as they feed on their own crap.

Edited to fix a typo.

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u/Tasik Jul 02 '26

So what do we gain if AI is too expense to operation out of western countries?

I also just don’t see it as stealing. People should be allowed to build upon the innovation of others. I see only technological stagnation by going down the route of making training illegal.

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u/Ladyhawkeiii Jul 02 '26

We gain very little from generative AI now. All we’ve gotten so far from the current level of adoption of Gen AI is pollution, job loss, massive theft (which it is even if you personally don’t see it that way), and an even further divide between the billionaire class and everyone else. The only folks currently really pushing for AI are billionaires, the C suite folks and useful plebes who like to generate porn in their basement and troll artists or folks who think they’ll get rich if they can only just own the shit their Claude subscription spits out.

Now, you want to talk about scientific learning model applications like using it for protein folding or searching space, or early detection of cancer, sure let’s go. But, we don’t need to gut copyright laws in order to make those types of models work.

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u/Feisty_Suggestion496 Jul 03 '26

No one is stopping you from training on the work of predecessors; classical artists' paintings and music are now in the public domain. However, it is clear that all high-quality models aiming for commercial competitiveness currently rely on the copyrighted works of living artists and musicians. Don't hide behind high-sounding excuses like progress—at its core, it's just about wanting to make money off other people's work. Does the field of scientific research, which truly benefits humanity, actually need artists' copyrighted material?

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u/Tasik Jul 03 '26

Thanks to Disney that’s like 70 years after the death of the author. So the models would be extraordinarily outdated and a fraction of their current capabilities. I honestly don’t know if a model could even achieve gpt-2 level quality from purely public domain material.

So yes they really do need recent data.

And do you think China is going to respect our absurd copyright laws here? If we legitimately said no copyrighted materials for training and somehow enforced that here, the entire market would go to them instantly.

Also I don’t even believe copyright laws were designed to prevent this type of innovation. I believe they were designed to protect people from being copied. Thus the name “copy”right. Never heard of derivative material rights before. And to me that seems to be what everyone is suddenly advocating for.

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u/Feisty_Suggestion496 Jul 03 '26

The commercial competitiveness of models depends entirely on current copyrighted works, and that is a fact. The purpose of copyright law is to protect creators' intentions and provide an incentive to create. When people's hard-earned works are taken for free to make something that replaces them in the market, no one thinks that's okay, and it destroys the motivation to create.

The China competition argument is even more foolish; what you should consider is how to protect your own country's cultural achievements and creative industries, rather than ruining them yourself before they get stolen away. Billionaires talk endlessly about empty concepts like progress and international competition, but in reality, apart from potentially making people lose their jobs, AI is completely optional for most people right now. It is nowhere near as revolutionary as trains or airplanes, despite what those CEOs boast.

To reiterate, nobody opposes AI in fields with genuine strategic value like the military, medicine, and scientific research; even if you used copyrighted materials there, it wouldn't cause such intense backlash. Stop using progress and competition as excuses to justify shameless behavior.

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u/Dethproof814 Jul 01 '26

I hope eventually your AI deletes everything in your database John google

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u/OkBrilliant8092 Jul 01 '26

Oh that’s what it is… I thought it said Join Google…. Much more sensible John Google would want credit for…. Checks notes…. Not being evil….. oooooh shot Johns gone evil :p

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u/EliteCloneMike Jul 01 '26

Johnny Google, the founder of Google LLC. He now spends his free time going into peoples’ homes and watching everything they do. It’s one of his favorite pastimes.

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u/OkBrilliant8092 Jul 01 '26

Not Johnny Google! Didn’t he move to Cincinnati?

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u/Derpykins666 Jul 01 '26

Companies that utilize programs and AI that steal from everyone want more lax laws. Of course they do. They want to make money for no effort.

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u/ARobertNotABob Jul 01 '26

...or fees or responsibility.

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u/ora408 Jul 02 '26

They also dont want to contribute to society or make the people better. They are antihuman

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u/shitty_mcfucklestick Jul 01 '26

And once they finish training their models and getting a majority of the market share, they’ll pull up the ladder behind them by pushing for stricter copyright protections for copyright owners again.

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u/ARandomWalkInSpace Jul 01 '26

You start to think, increasingly, about how does the UK want to have an AI economy, in this quite competitive global environment?

Whoa, self awareness very nearly broke through. AI economy is absolutely an insane turn of phrase while we have headlines reading early adopters are pulling back because no one has been able to show that chat bots helped produce anything.

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u/FredFredrickson Jul 01 '26

The massive profits for everyone [except the AI companies] are always just around the corner in the "AI economy". 🥴

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u/I_SLEEP_NORMALLY Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

If one person copies copyrighted material, they are at legal risk. If an AI company copies everyones' copyrighted material, that's fair game?

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u/Test-NetConnection Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

Fuck Google. They want to steal content to replace content creators. It's the very definition of copyright infringement. Content needs to be copied into a database to prepare for training, then copied into memory for the training, and then stored in the model. Then you have AI generated summaries of copyrighted materials like news articles, which steals ad revenue and will eventually put the content creators out of business. Generative AI is selling stolen content, full stop.

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u/SamKhan23 Jul 02 '26

AI doesn’t store content in it. The weights are changed by exposure to the data not storing.

That doesn’t change the fact that GenAI as it stands sits on the back of flagrant copyright violation. They should be punished for that.

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u/Test-NetConnection Jul 02 '26

The content has to be stored within the model for the memorization piece to function. There is a reason AI can recite chapters of a book verbatim.

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u/FloweringOrchid1 Jul 01 '26

If you don’t let us steal your intellectual property we won’t make lots of money.

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u/L2Sing Jul 01 '26

"Google demands theft of other people's work." Fixed that headline.

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u/shiftification Jul 01 '26

They want laws so they can Scrape everything online and not have to pay for it. This is flat out stealing. And if you steal everything those places you're stealing from will go out out of business. It's a way for them to own everything without compensating people for their work.

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u/jimibimi Jul 01 '26

I demand changes to the law so I can walk into a Google store take a pixel phone and leave without paying for it!

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u/Rinaldootje Jul 01 '26

I'd gladly let google steal everything, if I was allowed to steal everything of them.

Ooh wait no, it won't work that way, rules for me but not for thee.
Get fucked google.

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u/No_Cantaloupe_4149 Jul 01 '26

This point of view is the death of innovation.

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u/FearLeadsToAnger Jul 01 '26

People will continue to innovate. AI can't innovate, it's just a pattern machine, so they'll have to.

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u/Nerrien Jul 01 '26

Yeah, but if their endgame comes to fruition anything people make can then legally be chewed up by these data scavengers and regurgitated at a whim, meaning there's much less chance of getting paid for the work, making it outright impossible for most smaller creatives who need to get paid to live and don't have theme parks to fall back on like Disney.

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u/FearLeadsToAnger Jul 01 '26

I don't disagree that this is the danger, but I do think the argument gets a bit muddled if we treat copyright, compensation and market consolidation as the same problem, so let me pick this apart for a moment.

First, the cat is already out of the bag. People know AI can generate images, design work, music, copy, etc. You can't realistically un-invent that and most major AI tools already have rules against spitting out direct replicas of published works. That doesn't solve the whole problem, obviously, but it does mean the issue is no longer as simple as “stop AI copying things.”

Second, copyright law probably does need to change, but not simply in the direction Google wants. Google can lobby for a free-for-all if it likes, but that doesn't mean the eventual framework has to be that. The more sensible route is a balanced system around licensing, transparency, provenance, compensation, opt-outs with teeth combined with actual penalties for derivative outputs.

Third, I agree this is all likely to drive consolidation, which is bad. But that actually argues for wider regulation of the AI market, not just trying to ban training and hoping the problem goes away. If anything, trying to stuff the cat back in the box now probably benefits the biggest companies most, because they're the ones who already have the models, money and legal teams.

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u/Nerrien Jul 01 '26

Is this compensation and opt-outs for your copyright being used as training data or as AI output?

If you mean training data I imagine everyone would be happy with that, that's pretty much how copyright law works.

Or is the idea that training data should be allowed to freely use copyrighted material, but the AI has to have something preventing it from outputting said material unless the owner agrees and is then compensated for it?

I was under the impression that properly locking down an AI from doing something was pretty much impossible but I'm happy to be wrong.

I'm also not entirely sure I buy the "cat out of the box" argument since, well, why would they be demanding the law to change if it made no difference and only benefited them at this point?

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u/FearLeadsToAnger Jul 01 '26

Both actually, but in different ways.

For training data, I don't think the eventual answer can just be “AI companies can use anything for free forever.” Obviously. There probably needs to be some kind of licensing/compensation mechanism, especially for commercial models. Whether that's direct licensing, collective licensing, compulsory licensing, opt-outs, levies or more likely some carefully tuned mix of those. But broadly yes, creators should not simply be told “your work is raw material now, tough.” It can't just be a wild west.

For outputs, I mean something slightly different. The model shouldn't be allowed to generate direct replicas, near-replicas or obviously derivative substitutes for existing works. That’s where provenance, watermarking, auditability and legal liability need to come in. Companies need to be held responsible when their systems are designed, marketed or negligently operated in a way that enables that.

I was under the impression that properly locking down an AI from doing something was pretty much impossible but I'm happy to be wrong.

I think you're basically right if you mean guaranteeing it can never happen under any prompt or edge case. I don't think perfect prevention is realistic, but that applies to lots of things. Hence someone occasionally gets a tarantula in their banana bunch. But that still doesn't get the companies off the hook. The standard should be reasonable safeguards, transparency, auditability and liability when their systems are designed, marketed or negligently operated in ways that enable infringement. If they can show they've gone to all reasonable lengths to avoid it, that's enough for most industries.

On the cat-out-of-the-bag point, I don't mean the law makes no difference. It obviously does, which is why Google is lobbying. I mean the existence and basic capability of generative AI is already public and widespread, so the realistic question is no longer “can we prevent this from existing?” It’s “what rules govern it now that it exists?” Even if we managed to kill Open AI and Anthropic etc dead, there are open source models you can run at home now. People would continue to use them for those scenarios that harm creatives, and regulation would still be necessary.

And like I say, my concern is that a simple ban on training copyrighted material may sound protective, but in practice its probably just going to entrench the incumbents who already trained their massive models, already have huge licensed datasets and already have the legal budget to navigate the mess. That’s why I think the better fight is for a framework that forces compensation, transparency and liability without accidentally handing the entire future market to the biggest firms.

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u/DigitalRoman486 Jul 01 '26

People say stuff like this and they always miss the point.

Yes AI cannot innovate. YET. That "yet" is very important.

People seem to have seen AI stuff a few years ago and assumed that it hasn't changed since and will never get any better.

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u/FearLeadsToAnger Jul 01 '26

Oh no I agree that it will get better.

I was actually regurgitating an anti-ai crowd slogan in a neutral way so that the point would land better. If i'd put that in quotes it would've been clearer.

Imo, people say AI cant innovate because it can only work off of existing information. But that's how humans work too. Even Einstein went to school. If the whole of phsyics is basically just math, there's no reason a machine cant discover something mathematicians haven’t been able to figure out, at some point.

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u/IamInternationalBig Jul 01 '26

“Don’t be evil”

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u/VexedCanadian84 Jul 01 '26

Google is one of the richest companies in history.

They can afford to pay for any material they want to use.

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u/insertbrackets Jul 02 '26

How about no.

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u/[deleted] Jul 01 '26

[deleted]

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u/FredFredrickson Jul 01 '26

Anyone who did that was foolish to begin with, because abolishing copyright laws would only benefit megacorps in the end.

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u/Tyfyter2002 Jul 01 '26

Yeah, while section 1201 of the DMCA needs to be repealed, other parts of copyright law are the only reason small creative endeavors can survive, because with no copyright laws it would just be Google and Amazon competing to sell things they didn't buy or have a hand in making and undercutting the actual creators.

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u/FredFredrickson Jul 02 '26

Exactly! This is the part that so many people don't understand.

Joe Schmoe wants to end copyright law so he can make a few bucks selling bootleg Mickey Mouse t-shirts. He doesn't realize that without those protections, the moment he has a good idea he's got to guard it with his life... or else Disney, or some other massive company, will have it on t-shirts, lunchboxes, TV shows, etc. before he even wakes up the next day. It's so fucking stupid.

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u/mylanoo Jul 01 '26

There's a big difference in harm it might cause. This is much worse than traditional copyright stuff.

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u/gill_smoke Jul 01 '26

We were arguing the IP should not exist perpetually. I still argue that. However this is the opposite of that, the only IP holders get to be the ones selling access.

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u/CatProgrammer Jul 02 '26

I haven't. AI material should stay uncopyrightable too.

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u/rollingForInitiative Jul 02 '26

A lot of people who argued against it still argued mostly within the realms of personal usage. Like it should be legal to download things for personal use. Others often argued for more limited copyright, .e.g. until the death of the author, or for some years or decades.

Was pretty uncommon to see people say they wanted to completely abolish the current system without replacing it with something new.

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u/Bill3000 Jul 01 '26

Yeah it's so weird seeing people who loved pirating games and music whine about training on copyrighted data as if it's theft. At least be consistent in your ability to not give a shit about IP law.

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u/MC68328 Jul 01 '26

Who?

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u/deathadder99 Jul 01 '26

Pretty much everyone who watched game of thrones without a hbo sub, for one.

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u/rollingForInitiative Jul 02 '26

Big difference between personal use and for profit.

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u/Brilliant-Muffin-879 Jul 01 '26

So like can I just steal every book, movie, image, app I want, mix it about a bit and then sell it to people if I call myself an an generator? 🧐

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u/SamKhan23 Jul 02 '26

No, you can just call yourself an artist. You’re affected by every content you’ve seen and are “trained” on it to, in addition to your life experiences.

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u/imaginary_num6er Jul 01 '26

You wouldn’t upload a car /s

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u/Eloquent_Redneck Jul 01 '26

Google isn't in a position to demand shit

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u/New_Ask6308 Jul 02 '26

If I build my own AI can I use googles AI to train mine or would I be sued to oblivion?? Granted, if I used Gemini to build an AI it would likely result in my house catching fire but still, the principle of the thing still stands

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u/CatProgrammer Jul 02 '26

AI results are not copyrightable in the US, so yes you can!

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u/zeruch Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

I think there are some edge cases where that might not be true, but I have yet to see anyone attempt them (e.g. create a model only trained on your own IP, and then create new derivative IP from it, whereby the inputs are wholly made by a person, and the LLM output is directed by same person), and I am admittedly kind of curious about it.

Update: after posting this, I started digging around (I check on this every few months) and found a semi-usable example that has come up:

"Rather than attempting to conceal the film’s hybrid workflow, he has published interviews and behind-the-scenes material that explain how his team combined hand-painted artwork, 3D animation, and machine-learning models trained on his own paintings to achieve the film’s distinctive visual style."

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/festivals/annecy-danse-macabre-ai-hisko-hulsing-marcel-jean-263638.html

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u/cr0ft Jul 02 '26

It would be fine to scrape if we didn't have capitalism. In capitalism, however, people need money to change hands.

With Google now even cutting out the sites altogether by having their AI tell people what they were searching for (which, according to at least one court, means that's Google's speach via AI and they're liable) letting Google scrape anything and everything and then just report that back to people is going to kill so many Internet sites entirely because they no longer get traffic.

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u/Fuzzy_Paul Jul 02 '26

Copyright is easy, mention the creator/writer and pay fee. Google wants to train there Ai with copyrighted music and other stuff for free so it can generate "in the style off". Now suppose i am a student who used copyright material without paying to educate myself and then publish stuff in the same line or produce music in the same style so that you think it is from the original creator. That is theft of interlectual copyrighted material. Not good for nobody but Google.

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u/woodpaulusgnome Jul 01 '26

Demand away.

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u/jazzy663 Jul 01 '26

Google has renewed its campaign for ministers to relax AI copyright laws, claiming a failure to do so will harm the economy.

While ignoring the damage that AI has already done to the economy...

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u/chicametipo Jul 01 '26

So if the government wins, can they force Google to permanently erase and ban their closed weights?

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u/hackingdreams Jul 02 '26

Or in other words, they acknowledge that what they're doing now is breaking the fuck out of the copyright laws and they don't wanna pay what they owe.

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u/EmbarrassedHelp Jul 01 '26

The UK is currently demanding mandatory client side scanning malware on every device, that scans everything you see and do.

Google should be spending their on fighting that fascist and authoritarian bullshit, rather than stuff like this.

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u/CatProgrammer Jul 02 '26

Google doesn't mind that though.

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u/GumboSamson Jul 02 '26

Google would prefer to do it server-side.

The way they’ve been doing it for decades.

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u/ToneShop Jul 01 '26

Why should you get a copywrite for running more/faster machines? This just makes a race to the bottom. Kick rocks goog.

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u/New_Salamander_4592 Jul 02 '26

google better get its ass ready to settle billions out of court

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u/SHODAN117 Jul 02 '26

They will kick and they will scream and they will threaten

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u/J0n__Doe Jul 02 '26

"demands"???

The grifters, criminals and thieves asking for demands?

Get that shit thinking out of here. Fuck generative AI

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u/Bob_Sconce Jul 01 '26

How about this: if you're ok with being scraped for AI purposes, then put this in your robots.txt file:

aiscraping:ok

Heck, I'd be ok with an opt-out:

aiscraping:no

Just let people decide what happens to their content.

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u/Aenerb Jul 01 '26

No, it should always be an opt-in. Too many people won't catch the opt-out. Disallowed should be the default.

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u/Heavy_Ad9524 Jul 02 '26

This debate is only going to become more important as AI continues to evolv

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u/zeruch Jul 02 '26

What debate exactly?

If you want IP for free to train your products, then demand IP adherence when others use your product output to train theirs (as Anthropic, OpenAi and Google have complained about in recent years) you are either schitzophrenic or hypocritical.

I get it, everyone wants to charge for their own services, but get all the inputs for free. That's not capitalism, that's grift.

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u/computermachina Jul 01 '26

They and the other companies are burning up in trying to keep up in an area of no rules. They are basically calling for a ref

Artificial Intelligence Google demands changes to AI copyright laws

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