Paris AI summit: 'Zero signatories' from Big Tech on copyright charter

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00:00Out of office and on assignment, Peter O'Brien, out and about in the city of lights. How are you,

00:04Peter? Tell us a little bit about what you've been up to.

00:10Well, Will, you're an expert now on AI and journalism. It was on your program Scoop on

00:16Friday, and we're talking about that a lot today and the effects of AI on other aspects of culture,

00:21notably on copyright. Now, France's culture minister, Rashida Dati, has just finished up

00:26her speech. She's just making a little wander around here, the Bibliothèque Nationale de

00:31France, looking at some of the exhibitions here. She says that we need to have not a compromise,

00:37but a virtuous circle of innovation when it comes to AI's interaction with culture.

00:44Now, she'll know more than anyone that this is easier said than done. It's been reported that

00:49one of the hoped outcomes of the summit is a charter on copyright to protect, may I remind

00:56our viewers, all that work that is scraped by these artificial intelligence models from the

01:03internet before they reproduce similar stuff. So yes, a lot of creative artists are not at all

01:08happy about that. So how can they be properly compensated? How can they be recognized?

01:14This charter, supposed to come out of the summit, has currently been signed by a number of

01:19publishing houses. We know that the International Publishers Association has signed an open letter

01:24calling for these kind of protections. But so far, there are zero signatories from big tech or big AI

01:31companies, which I think does it all. A virtuous circle. That sounds nice,

01:36doesn't it? But I'm curious if there's a disconnect between governments and what the

01:42private sector seems as necessary. Also, concern among civil society. Is a virtuous circle even

01:49realistic? Yeah, we talked to Maria Ressa yesterday, actually, at another event of the OECD,

01:57who had very strong opinions about this. She said, essentially, AI is just producing lies

02:03en masse. So that's the other problem, right? It's the disinformation. And Rashida Dati did

02:07nod to that and say that needs to be mastered. But it's very, very unclear how this is going

02:12to happen. Because when you talk to an AI chatbot, it produces answers that sound very,

02:17very convincing. And you need to go then and do the legwork to check the facts yourself. We can't

02:22rely on it for facts. It's not designed to tell you the truth. It's designed to predict the next

02:28word in a sequence. So a lot of stuff on both the technical and the regulatory level still needs to

02:35be done on this. In fact, the European Commission has this just in the last couple of days,

02:41only for the first time really defined what artificial intelligence is. So there's still

02:47a lot of work to be done. And we know that you mentioned a disconnect there. Well, there's a

02:51little bit of a disconnect within the French government itself. We know that Emmanuel Macron

02:56doesn't have as much power as he once does. We know about all about the political chaos going

03:00on here in France. And even within the summit itself, we have a tension between trying to drum

03:05up as much investment as possible for France and being business friendly and open to business,

03:11but also trying to stand up for the things that France believes in, like human rights,

03:16like sustainability, like protecting the climate. So we're not really sure how the declaration is

03:22going to go at the end of this, especially given that the US is a very uncertain player in this

03:27game at this time.

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