¶ Introduction to AI and AEC Series
Welcome back to KP Unpacked . This is where the biggest ideas in AEC and AI and innovation they all collide in one podcast . It's powered by KP ReadyCo . This is where we break down the trends , the technology , the discussions and the strategies that are shaping the built environment and beyond , and this is the AI and AEC version .
You may have guessed that because , as you're looking at the screen , assuming that you're watching this on YouTube , but if you're listening to it , I'm just going to describe it To my what is it to my right ? To my right is Frank Lazzaro . He is my teammate here at KP ReadyCo . He is our in-house AI expert . He is not KP Ready .
The traditional form of KP Unpacked is KP and I unpacking one of his LinkedIn posts , but this is the AI and AEC version , where Frank and I take one AI topic per episode , we break it down and we give you actionable takeaways for that particular topic . This is we have a lot of fun here and I think we make it very practical .
I think we'd make it very useful . At least , that's the feedback we've been getting , and I really enjoyed this conversation . So , frank , thanks for joining me again today . Yeah .
I'm glad to be back . Yeah , we're getting a lot of good feedback . I think it's timely . I also think too and I think you hit the nail on the head on that one it's , you know , diving deep on that one topic really kind of allows people to kind of really kind of figure out .
You know all the things that we hear from not only our client conversations and things that we hear at conferences et cetera , but these are topics that really come from the audience , so it's just as great .
Yeah , yeah , and that's that's a good reminder , right , as you're listening to this or watching this . However you consume this . It's probably easier if you're watching it to go over to YouTube and leave a comment there on YouTube , but wherever you're consuming this and maybe you're . Maybe you found it through LinkedIn . However , you found this episode .
If you've got a question , if you've got a comment , if you've got a suggestion for a future topic , just put it in the comments . Our production team not only are they going to provide the links for the things that Frank and I talk about so don't don't panic when we start dropping this , that or the other . You know , look at this and look at that .
The links will be in the show notes below , so our production team will put those there but also they'll be looking for your questions , your comments , your suggestions . So if you've got a suggestion about a future episode , hey , we need to know about this . We're just trying this . We saw this tool came out .
Whatever it is , put that in the comments below and maybe we'll turn that into an episode in the future .
That's a great way for us to map out what it is that we talk about here , absolutely . If not , I've got to get to some writing and kind of start writing up some new episodes .
Yes , please do the work for us . Don't make us guess That'll be my weekend if we don't get any comments . Yeah , frank and his wife would like for you to give him a break this weekend . So please leave a comment on what you want to hear , what you want to hear us talk about next week .
In all seriousness and that was actually serious , but in all seriousness today , frank , we're going to talk about AI and copyright , which has been a hot topic since , basically since ChatGPT came out , I think , or became available to the public . So we know that AI can generate content could be written , could be images . There's there . It could be code .
There's lots of things that we could use AI to generate , and I think it is again my . You know my background .
For those of you that may or may not know this , my background is architecture , and one of the things that is on every title block of every drawing set that's in circulation across the aec industry is a copyright statement who owns the copyright on these , on these construction documents
¶ AI and Copyright: The Core Issue
. So that's one thing right . It's a big deal in the industry . So , when it comes to ai , we're probably not using AI to literally generate all of our construction docs today , but for whatever it is that we're putting together , we need to understand who owns or at least what the copyright issues are and how firms can protect their work .
So where do we start with this , Frank ? Where do we start with this exploration today .
So I think we need to start . Let's go back to the beginning . When I say the beginning , though , that's only two years ago , right ? So we go back about two years ago when all of these generative AI tools started coming out , right ? There was really , you know , probably two or three questions that always came up , and I think we've already covered them right .
Like we talked about data privacy , data security last week , we've talked about , you know , using , you know , information and projects , all that other stuff . Copyright is one of those things that did come up , and so for the longest time , we didn't hear anything from the government .
There was really nothing from the copyright office , and no one's really kind of telling anyone who owns it who doesn't own it . Good news is fast forward to 2025, . This past January , the copyright office actually released a paper that gave guidelines on what is copyrightable and what is not copyrightable when it comes to AI , and so , interestingly enough
¶ Copyright Office Guidelines Explained
, they're treating AI just like any software tool . So Autodesk could not claim copyright to a design you do as an architect just because you use their software . Same thing with Microsoft Word can't claim copyright to the book that you wrote just because you use Microsoft Word to write your book .
The key distinction in all of this is is that there needs to be some human authorship . So if you are significantly writing your own prompts , right , you're not getting the AI to write the prompts . It's not . There's there's no auto creation , so to speak .
If you're writing the prompt and it produces something according to the copyright office , you do have some kind of claim over that Interesting right . I think there are varying opinions about that . I think people are like well , is it really yours ? Is it not really yours ? The government's position is like hey , listen , the existing law is sufficient to cover this .
It essentially says that , hey , you can copyright it if a human actually authored it , regardless of the tool that they used .
Okay , actually authored it , regardless of the tool that they used . Okay , and this is being you know . For those who are , who are wondering about this or question this , this is being tested in the courts right now but , by the way .
So the testing in the courts , though , is not so much of people coming after creators . They're going after the models for stealing other people's work to train their models . So it's already . It's the existing content owners that are actually suing the models , not necessarily the end users . Okay , so I think that's a clear distinction too .
It's like I don't know of any case to where someone is being sued that created something on the backend . Now , I do know , like , recently , openai had that whole Sora thing . There was a Japanese animation artist where , basically , they were basically replicating his work . He sent the cease and desist . They kind of shut the feature off .
So I think that there's a lot of gray area still . I can't go in and say , hey , create this artist work to look like mine and and then play it off as my own . I think that starts getting a little sketchy .
But I think , if you use it for true business purposes , like where you're taking something that you've already written and you're rewriting it or augmenting it or supplementing it or something along those lines , what I think is is that that is copyrightable .
There are still a lot of great questions , right , so I have , you know , one big thing I like to put out to you and to the audience is like where do you stand on , jeff , if you just went to chat GPT and kept prompting it over and over again and then basically created a book and then published it , do you own the copyright on that ?
It's a really good question . I think in some ways you might , in other ways you don't . So for those that , um , that do self publish , interestingly enough , if you self-publish through Amazon , when you go to put your book up , there are now , I think , two or three questions that they ask you about your content .
They ask you one is any of this content AI generated to to the level to which it is ? Is it wholly generated ? Is it somewhat generated but edited or only edited ? So they so now they're even trying to bifurcate how they're how , how ai is being used .
Because you think about it , if I wrote my own book but then also use grammarly to kind of help me fix my grammar which is an ai tool , is that ai so nice ? They see , now you start seeing where it gets a little bit confusing .
But the copyright office says hey , listen , if you've , if you , if a human has been involved significantly , you can copyright it yeah , well , and , and you know your example of of publishing or or
¶ Meaningful Human Input Requirement
writing , take , take even the notion of publishing out .
You don't even have to go that far . Well , I guess you do for the sake of argument . But but how many ? How many people ? I mean , every , every time I open instagram or or whatever , there's always a course or somebody talking about using , using ai to to write a book . You know , hey , become a thought leader , use ai to to write your book , etc .
I mean there , I mean there's Frank Kern , who's a famous copywriter , which is a different copyright than what we're talking about , spelled differently . In fact , he's got a course right now and a tool right that he's selling to use that . So I would wonder right this ?
this has massive implications , obviously yeah , I would wonder how many books on amazon are written that way yeah , so it's interesting , so the quote from the report . So , by the way , we'll provide you a link to the report so that you can go and kind of read it yourself .
But one thing that stood out when I was kind of doing an analysis of that report from the US Copyright Offices and this is a quote AI tools used as part of the creative process do not affect copyright eligibility , but AI generated works without meaningful this is where it gets a little gray .
I don't understand where meaningful comes in , but meaningful human input are not protected . So what that's saying is is that if and the way I interpret it is that if you don't have a human touch throughout the whole process , it's not copyrightable .
But if you have AI assist you in that process whether it's through proofing , whether it's augmenting your existing content or something then it , then there's a protection . That's there . So it is interesting on how they're kind of phrasing some of those words .
But yeah , I , I would recommend people you know definitely go check out , read the report if you're , if you're interested in diving deep on this . But you do have some protection even if you use AI to create something .
Yeah , yeah , so we know , right , it almost seems like they're they're trying to provide job security for some judges , but we know that these things are going to be tested , they're going to be challenged , et cetera , so , but , but we , but we have a feel for who owns AI generated work . Let's just call it that text , images , the proposals .
You know your responses to the rfp , etc . What happens , though , if ai created content violates copyright ? Do we know that yet ?
no , I don't think we do , and I think that's what's going to play out in the courts right at some point . Yeah , you know , you go back .
I think it's going to be less on the word and probably more on the graphic side , because if you're replicating a style or an artist style , I think you're more likely to violate copyright there than it is to holistically lift words , right .
So I think you know , and there's ways to kind of mitigate the words where you know , if you use someone's copyrighted work in writing your book , but you provide references to where you pull that information from and you're and you're giving attribution and credit to it Right , that's , that's literally every academic research paper on the planet
¶ Copyright Violations in AI Content
Right off of someone else's work . So as long as you're providing references and attribution , particularly in text written like books , copies , reports , white papers , I think you're going to run less into the issue with that .
I think where the struggle is is that you as an architect me as an architect I use AI to replicate some kind of design element that you use , that you've created , that's unique to you . You know some type of fascia or something on the outside of the building , right ?
It's going to be hard for me to sit there and say that I came up with that on my own right . You start thinking about it . So I think that what you're going to find is , on the graphic side , that this is going to be a bigger issue than on the written word side .
Yeah , yeah . So , as firms are using AI and again this could be graphic , it could be written , I think it's . In a way , it , the AI , is learning where the data is coming from . How do they ensure that it is original and that they're not in danger of violating some copyright ?
Yeah , so one of the things that I teach in all of my workshops , particularly when we're talking about content creation , the safest place to be is to start with something that you've already created Right . The safest place to be is to start with something that you've already created Right .
Our , our industry is historically and almost comically known for this concept of go buys . We never create a proposal from scratch . It's always let's go back to that previous proposal and then we can improve it . Let's go back to this previous design and we can improve . It's almost kind of like we love the concept of go buys .
Well , that creates a lot of efficiencies in most of our processes , but it's In general . If you're looking to avoid any issues , if you start with your own content and then look to augment and improve and all this other stuff , what you're going to find is that you're less likely to run into those kinds of issues .
And that's even what the Copyright Office is saying is that if you have significant human input into what you're creating meaning that I'm using AI to help write a book into what you're creating , meaning that I'm using AI to help write a book I'm going to write the most of the chapter myself and then use AI to clean it up and edit it and really kind of make
it flow a lot better . That's copyrightable , according to the copyright office , because the work really generated for me the genesis of the work is for me . Ai is really just helping me kind of clean up the flow and editing .
So if we look at it from that perspective , you'll avoid issues if you start with stuff that you already created , versus saying , from whole cloth , create me something . And I think that's where you're going to run into issues .
So if you're being really super lazy and you're just having AI do all the work , then you're going to really kind of run into issues , in my opinion .
Yeah , yeah , I mean that's . I think that's an important point . Right , we can . I think we talked about we probably talked about this on um ,
¶ Starting With Your Own Content
on a lot of our episodes right , you have to apply critical thinking , um , lazy .
AI is bad , yeah , and I think it also plays into the point of that . It reinforces the fact that AI is not going to take your job because there has to be human involvement at some point , when it comes at least to the generative AI side . You know , on the robotic side , you know there doesn't need to be human involvement .
You basically program it and it uses AI to kind of do a task , but you're not copywriting those tasks . What you're really copywriting is the creation part .
So if you're thinking about just creation in and of itself , start with your content as a base and what you're going to do is you're going to find that it's going to be less and less of an issue and you're not going to . Now , again , I think from a written word perspective , I think you're less likely to run into that issue . Where does this go ?
When you start thinking about video , you start thinking about rendering , you start thinking about photos , to where , essentially , all of those models are built off . Basically , they're training it off of other images . So those images are coming from someone or somewhere . They're not necessarily all open source or somewhere they're not necessarily all open source .
So if I'm going in and wanting to render a building in a certain particular style , right , I , like you , know Frank Lloyd Wright , right ? Is there a chance that I could be infringing on some kind of copyright or design element or something along those lines ?
If that's what I'm asking him to do , like I'm asking the AI to do that , like it's not going to randomly just go find some minimalistic design that's not his , yeah , right , it's going so . So , again , I think , images and video .
I think we're going to run into more issues , mainly because of of where they're finding their content to train the models yeah , yeah , there there's that famous video from um .
Yeah , there's that famous video from ZHA , which is Zaha Hadid Architects , from their computational design studio , where they basically the data that they have , the AI , go through all kinds of iterations and gyrations and create building after building , after design , after design after design . Some are horizontal and some are vertical , and so on and so forth .
This video that comes out of their like I said , out of their computational design studio . You watch this video of the AI . If they call it hallucinations maybe that's that is what they call it but as you watch this , you see what could be considered , project after project after project .
But every single one of them , if you know their work , if you know zaha's work , you look at it and you go , yep , zaha , zaha , zaha , zaha zaha . And in fact , none of them are actually quote-unquote , designed by zaha hadid architects .
It's just ai creating all of these based on a depth of data you know from , from the style of of their work , from the style of their design . So that's that's one . That's that's uh easily , uh , uh , searchable on on youtube . You can find it pretty easily .
We'll put it in the show notes yeah , there was another case that was recently decided , I think in february of this year . Um , you , and essentially it's revolving around , you know , I think the federal courts , you know , are really kind of focusing Cause again .
This is like the lawsuit someone someone was trying to copyright something that was 100% AI generated and they were denied . So it was one of those things to where , because there was cause , it lacked any human authorship .
It's like you program the AI to do something and AI did it , and then he tries to copyright it and it's just like , well , wait a minute , you , there was no human involvement in that creation . Yeah , right , so I think I think it's , I think it's more complicated . I think this is kind of a .
I think the way the copyright office has addressed it right now , it's a little bit of a bandaid . I think again agree with you 100 .
I think this will eventually kind of be driven either through policy changes or lawsuits or both yeah , yeah , I guess it's like anything else , um , you know , any sort of new territory it's , it's gonna have to be uh , tested and challenged before , before it's all settled out so .
So I think the existing content owners are the ones that are really upset right now because , again , these models are only as good as the data that they can train on , and so what they're doing is that I don't think people understand this , but they're essentially just sucking in as much information as they possibly can , and part of it is copyrighted information ,
right . And so then the question becomes you know like ? To what benefit or to what end are they allowed to do that , right ? And you know , maybe the content creators may end up losing . At the end of the day , they may end up winning , I don't know . So it is . It is fascinating to kind of see how that plays out .
Yeah , I agree . And so as we think about this , you know , we head towards the part of our episode here where we give some takeaways , some actionable things . Do you know , based on the information from the Copyright Office and other cases that you've heard about , what is it that firms need to do ?
We know that they need to be careful right , we know all those things . We know that
¶ Protecting Your Firm: Policy and Training
there's plenty of gray area around the ruling or the paper , I guess from the copyright office . But what is it that firms need to do to protect themselves ? I think on the side of making sure they don't violate something , but also on the side of how do they protect themselves ?
Yeah , yeah . So I think there's a couple of things . One and I think we've covered this before in a previous episode right , Strong AI policy is probably a very good place to start . Right , Just like with everything else , you know the do's and don'ts of what you can and cannot do .
The other thing , too , is you know , within that policy , or particularly within the training that you're offering to your employees , because I think training is a very big , important , big again , I think the concept of training is just reinforced by this concept as well . Right , Like you're not training people there , they can inevitably do something .
Maybe that's an inadvertent way , but they could do something that could run afoul of copyright . But the way I look at this again is go back to , if you're using your own content to create new content , some modification of that .
You are in a better position to be protected that if you just asked it to kind of create something willy-nilly , a whole cloth type of perspective . So really , two big takeaways for me is that , one , make sure that you have the right policy in place . Two , you need to train on that policy so that people actually know how to use the tools appropriately .
And then the third component is really just focus on making sure that the content that you're using is starting with something that you've already created .
Yeah , yeah , I think those are good points and , yes , there's going to be a chicken and egg there , right ? Well , that's great , frank , but we're just starting out with AI . How do we base it on something we've already created ?
Right , there's a beginning to this right that you have to , that you have to build from and and I agree , I mean , I think it does so much of this in terms of protecting your firm . I think it does very much , just like you just said , it does go back to having solid policies and trainings .
I don't , I don't see how going forward and right so you know many people that listen to this know that I teach professional practice . This is going to have to become a component of of pro practice classes too . Right we have . We have to have policies that are designed to allow us to use the tools properly and keep us out of trouble essentially .
I mean , that's way boiled down ?
I think yeah . And what I do think , though , too , is it becomes more and more important as , like right now , a lot of these tools are third party tools , that kind of sit . You know , you have to go to chat , gpt , you have to go here . How does that change when it's actually when the ai is actually inside autocad ? How does that change ?
When it's inside revit , how does that change ? So you have all these design tools now that either are dabbling in the AI and they're doing something . But let's fast forward four years from now , five years from now , when AI is truly embedded in those applications . How do you protect yourself ? Right , because right now it just kind of sits on the outside ?
Right , I can go here , I can go there , but once it gets into our everyday apps as an architect or design professional or something along those lines , I think that's where , like you said , you're going to have to integrate it into your curriculum . But I think that is something that most firms are going to have to deal with , that going forward .
Yeah , that's . That's an interesting point because you know when . One of the one of the questions that comes up
¶ Future of AI in Design Tools
a lot is well , when is Revit going to Revit whatever 236 ? When is it going to be rolled out with full AI capabilities ? And there's all kinds of reasons for Revit being where it is today . But I think that point that you just made is an important one when is the data going to come from ?
Because , if you use a Revit as a , for instance I'm not picking on Autodesk If you use a building information modeling tool that has full AI capability , where is the data going to come from ? Is it going to come from your work , from the work of your firm , or is it going to come from a larger data lake that's housed at the mothership , at the mothership ?
Because that , that also , that this , this opens up a whole nother episode , because the liability , the potential liability there is huge , right .
Well , there's also the question of like yeah , the other thing is you start thinking about the concept of synthetic data . Well , yeah , so you can . You can have an AI kind of create synthetic data from you for you , which is really not owned by anybody . But then the bigger question is just like where did it learn to create the synthetic ?
So it has to learn it from somewhere . So at some point there has to be some source , there has to be something at some point that's telling it what those elements are , so that it could create synthetic data . So I think it is a bigger question . I think that one . I don't really believe that there is a true answer right now .
I think we have , we have a guiding light on what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in this , in this area , but I still think that there's more to come when it comes to this particular topic .
Yeah , yeah , absolutely , and , and so we'll , we'll .
We'll wrap this episode here in our conversation on AI and copyright , but I'm sure that we will revisit this again very and then it also starts to morph into other conversations about different types of liability as well , so we will definitely be back to this topic and tangents from this topic in future episodes . So , again , we appreciate you listening to this .
Let us know what you think .
In the show notes , um , in the the comment section , especially if you're watching this on youtube , give us questions , give us comments , give us recommendations for future topics and , uh , our , our production team will be looking for those , and also our production production team will be dropping links for things that we're talking about into the show notes .
So look for those . As always , my name is Jeff Eccles . I head up our mastermind program and our incubator here at KP ReadyCo , and I'm joined by my teammate , frank Lazzaro , who is our AI guru . Now , he's not an AI-created guru , he's our guy that's staying on top of AI . How's that ? That's right .
I'm the Gen Xer that just happened to figure out AI .
There you go Two Gen X guys talking about AI . That's the new name of this show . So , frank , thank you , as always , for joining me for this episode today and thank all of you for listening . We appreciate youed the AI and AEC version . This is where the biggest ideas in AEC and AI and innovation collide .
It's powered by KP ReadyCo and this is where we talk about the trends , the technology , the discussions and the strategies that are shaping the places where you live , where you work , where you play , where you worship , where you eat , where you do all the things that you like to do the built environment . So thanks for joining us .
We'll see you again next week . Thanks , everybody .