Yesterday, in the Federal Register, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a notice of inquiry (NOI) regarding copyright and artificial intelligence (AI). The Office has decided to do a study on whether legislative or regulatory steps are necessary to address the copyright law and policy questions that arise from generative AI. In particular, the NOI seeks factual information on the use of copyrighted works to train AI models, the level of transparency and disclosure needed with respect to the use of copyrighted works, and the legal status of AI-generated outputs, among other things.

This NOI is an important next step for the Office’s AI initiative, which was recently launched earlier this year. With the rapid growth of generative AI, the Office launched this initiative to address the many issues raised by this technology. The Office will be taking comments until November 15, 2023, which can be submitted here.