Billboard reported representative Adam Schiff introduced new legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, which, if passed, would require AI companies to disclose which copyrighted works were used to train their models, or face a financial penalty.

Called the Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, the new bill would apply to both new models and retroactively to previously released and used generative AI systems.

Generative AI models are trained on up to trillions of existing works. In some cases, data sets, which can include anything from film scripts to news articles to music, are licensed from copyright owners, but often these models will scrape the internet for large swaths of content, some of which is copyrighted, without the consent or knowledge of the author.

Many of the world’s largest AI companies have publicly defended this practice, calling it “fair use,” but many of those working in creative industries take the position that this is a widespread form of copyright infringement.

The Hill reported Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would require companies using copyrighted material to train their generative artificial intelligence models to publicly disclose all of the work that they used it to do.

The bill, called the “Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act,” would require people creating training datasets — or making any significant changes to a dataset — to submit a notice to the Register of Copyrights with a “detailed summary of any copyrighted works used” and the URL for any publicly available material.

According to The Hill, the bill would require notice be filed no later than 30 days after the AI system is available to the public for use. It would also apply retroactively to AI systems already publicly available, and they would have 30 days to submit the notice once the bill goes into effect.

The Register of Copyrights would then publish an online database available to the public with all the notices.

The Guardian reported a new bill introduced in the US Congress on Tuesday intends to force artificial intelligence companies to reveal the copyrighted material they use to make their generative AI models. 

The legislation adds to a growing number of attempts from lawmakers, news outlets, and artists to establish how AI firms use creative works like songs, visual art, books and movies to train their software – and whether those companies are illegally building their tools off copyrighted content.

The bill would need companies to file such documents at least 30 days before publicly debuting their AI tools, or face a financial penalty. Such datasets encompass billions of lines of text and images or millions of hours of music and movies.

“AI has the disruptive potential of changing our economy, our political system, and our day-to-day lives. We must balance the immense potential of AI with the crucial need for ethical guidelines and protections,” Schiff said in a statement.

In my opinion, if this bill is passed, it could require those who feed copyrighted works into their generative AI models to endure some sort of financial penalty. I’m not a fan of those who secretly steal other creator’s works for their own benefit.