Much ink has been spilled on the legal discourse surrounding generative AI (GenAI) and copyright. In this post, the focus is on the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in the context of training GenAI models, where such use could jeopardise the market for those particular expressions (see Sobel). Several copyright lawsuits have been filed by rightsholders in different countries alleging that the use of the underlying data constitutes copyright infringement (see Lawsuits v. AI). Like some other jurisdictions, the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (the ASEAN), are in the process of introducing AI regulation to protect rightsholders from its adverse effects. The ever-evolving nature of GenAI makes it difficult for policymakers to keep up with the potential risks and benefits. There is a risk that ASEAN member states could do more harm by prematurely amending their copyright laws in the context of a moral panic (see Tartaro, et al).
This contribution proposes soft measures to remunerate rightsholders whose work is illegally used to train GenAI models, focusing on the ASEAN and how their non-interference principle (the ASEAN Way) could address the issue. It explores how the ASEAN Member States, through the proposal of the ASEAN Guide on AI Governance and Ethics (ASEAN AI Framework) and the ASEAN Way, could protect rightsholders and best accommodate innovation within the community. It finds that the ASEAN could introduce an author-centric and consensus-based “common approach” to regulate the use of copyright-protected materials in training GenAI models.