In May, Informa, a multi-billion dollar UK-based multinational A Business Development It has signed an agreement with Microsoft that includes „access to advanced learning content and data and a partnership to explore AI expert applications.” Informa parent company Taylor & FrancisIt publishes a wide range of academic and technical books and journals, so the data in question may include the content of these books and journals.
According to Reports released last week, the authors of the content do not appear to have been asked or informed of the agreement. What’s more, they say they have no option to back out of the deal and won’t see any money from it.
Academics are just the latest in a slew of groups we call content creators to see their work absorbed by AI models currently racing to improve the products of human culture. Newspapers, Visual artists And Record labels AI companies are already being taken to court.
While it’s unclear how Informa will respond to the rumblings of discontent, the deal reminds editors to be vigilant about the contractual terms of the publishing deals they sign.
What’s in an Information Agreement?
Informa’s update outlined four key parts of Microsoft’s deal:
- Increase Informa’s own productivity
- Creating an automated citation tool
- Developing AI-powered research assistant software (perhaps similar to the system being tested Online academic library JSTOR)
- Microsoft offers data access to „help improve the relevance and performance of AI systems.”
Information will pay £8 million (A$15.5 million) for initial access to the information, followed by an unspecified amount over the next three years.
We don’t know exactly what Microsoft plans to do with its data access, but content from academic books and articles will be added to the training data of generative AI models like ChatGPT. In principle this should make the output of AI systems more accurate, although existing AI models have faced severe criticism. Retrieves training data Without quoting (which can be viewed as a type of Theft), but also for Finding Misinformation And teaches For authentic sources.
However, „the agreement protects intellectual property rights, including verbatim text extracts and aligning the importance of detailed citations”.
The mentioned „Limitations in Verbatim Text Extraction” may be relevant American doctrine of fair useIt permits certain uses of copyright-protected content.
Many creative AI companies are currently facing copyright infringement lawsuits over their use of training data, and their defense will rely on claiming fair use.
The „importance of detailed citations” may be related to the concept of attribution in copyright. it is a Moral right Teachers have. It provides that the creator of the work must be known and considered the author when their work is reproduced.
How does scholarly publishing generally work?
Most academics do not get paid or profit from most of their scholarly output. Conversely, writing journal and conference papers is usually considered part of the job in a full-time, tenure-track position. Publication builds an academic’s credibility and promotes their research.
The basic process often goes like this: an author researches and writes an original article and submits it to a journal publisher for peer review. Most peer reviewers and editorial board members are not paid for their work.
In fact, some journals require editors to pay „”.Article processing feeTo cover editing and other expenses. It could be a thousand dollars Open access publication. Generally speaking, the more valuable the output, the higher the fee.
If an article passes peer review, the author will be asked to sign it Release Agreement. Terms may include logistical arrangements such as when the article will be published, the format (print, online, or both), and the division of royalties (if applicable). There will also be provisions regarding copyright and ownership of the article.
A writer usually has to provide Exclusive rights To the publisher to distribute and publish the article. This means that the author may not publish the article elsewhere, and the publisher may sublicense the article to a third party, such as an AI company.
Sometimes publishers have to assign the copyright of the article to them in perpetuity Copyright Transfer Agreement.
Basically, this means that the author, as the copyright holder in the work, assigns all of their copyright to the publisher. Publisher may reproduce, communicate, distribute or license the work to others as they wish.
Only limited rights can be granted rather than all rights, and this is something authors should consider.
Content mining
It is vital that authors understand the implications of licensing and assignment and think through exactly what they are agreeing to when signing a contract. In light of the recent trend Publishers enter into contracts with companies that develop AIPublishers’ AI policies should also be closely scrutinized.
In America, a standard Collaborative licensing solution for content use in internal AI systems Recently published, it sets out rights and remuneration for copyright holders. Similar licenses to use content for AI systems will enter the Australian market very soon.
The types of deals that have struck between educational publishers and AI companies have raised big-picture concerns for many educators. Should scholarly research be reduced to content? AI Knowledge Mining? There are no clear answers about the ethics and morality of such practices.