OpenAI, Stability AI, AI21 Labs, Anthropic, and Deepmind logos are seen on their websites on a computer. Shutterstock/ Tada Images

Google has announced it will protect customers using its generative AI tools in Google Cloud and Workspace from copyright violations.

The new protections offer both indemnity for training data used by Google’s generative AI and for generated output, in what the company calls a “second layer of protection”.

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In a blog post on Friday, Google said its generated output indemnity would extend across Duet AI, Vertex AI Search, conversation and embedding API, and its visual captioning tool.

“If you are challenged on copyright grounds, we will assume responsibility for the potential legal risks involved,” the company said.

Google is not the first to announce indemnity for its generative AI users. Microsoft announced in September that it would shoulder the legal responsibility if Copilot users were sued. ADOBE also made similar claims seeking to protect users of its Firefly platform.

Major tech companies investing in AI have been embattled by several lawsuits brought by prominent copyright owners, such as George R.R. Martin and Jodi Picoult.

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In August, US District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that “human authorship is an essential part of a valid copyright claim.”

Judge Howell’s ruling set a new standard for intellectual property (IP) issues in the field of AI. Fears that AI is trained using copyrighted material have resulted in several lawsuits.

In July, comedian Sarah Silverman announced a lawsuit against OpenAI and Meta for alleged copyright infringement, claiming that the companies used their work in their training data without permission.

In January 2023, Getty images announced a lawsuit against Stability Ai in London’s High Court of Justice alleging the image generator infringed on Getty’s copyrighted photographs.