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A court just ruled that training an AI on someone else's editorial work isn't fair use
TechSpot • • business
Key Points:
- The Third Circuit ruled that Ross Intelligence infringed Thomson Reuters' copyrights by using Westlaw's editorial headnotes to train a competing AI legal research system, rejecting Ross's fair use defense.
- The court found Westlaw's headnotes to be copyrightable because they involve original editorial judgment in summarizing legal issues, despite being based on public court opinions.
- Ross's use of the headnotes to train an AI system for a competing legal research product was deemed minimally transformative and commercially harmful, undermining the fair use claim.
- The decision highlights that AI training on copyrighted editorial content, even if used internally and not directly displayed, can constitute infringement when it serves a competing commercial purpose.
- While specific to this case, the ruling underscores the importance of distinguishing between public domain materials and protected editorial content in AI training data.
