AI and Copyright Laws: What Podcasters Need to Know – PCI 406

Welcome to podcast Insider. I'm Mike Doyle, the Vp customer relations here at Blueberry Podcast podcasting. Hello, I'm barry kent. I'm general Counsel I'm chief Financial off or of blueberry. So, yeah today, we're gonna talk about copyright your podcast, especially when you're using Ai to create your content. You're listening to podcast insider hosted by Mike Dell, Todd Cochran and Mackenzie Bennett from the Blueberry team.

Bringing you weekly insights, advice and insider tips and tricks to help you start, grow, and thrive through podcasting.

With all the support of your team here at Blueberry podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in. So Barry with us the longer than I've been with us since 2005, so An old timer, I'm 1 of the founders of the company. You've been on this show before, but to probably not in the newest format. You've been podcasting as long as just about anybody here at Bra and Blueberry. Yeah. I started a podcast in February 2005.

Yeah. You beat me by, I don't know, 3 4 months. So we've we've been at this a while. So today, like we said in the intro there, can talk about copyright and Ai in podcasting. And then we have a few subject you wanna a cover there. Yeah. You know what speaking about in business for a long time. We've seen a lot of changes come forth in terms of podcasting over the years. And the biggest, and I think the most recent change comes with artificial intelligence and creating content

for your podcast. And there's some dangers in that not sure how significant those dangers are, but, you, it's good to be aware of them. When I'm talking about danger. I'm talking about the legal liability for your podcast.

And part of that legal liability would come to copyright violations. And when you use artificial intelligence, who owns that content or the copyright to that content when you use Ai produced content and your podcast. Well, our United States copyright office

does not recognize content that's not created by a human being. An artificial intelligence obviously, isn't a human being. So our copyright office does not. Recognize any copyright that you, the producer would claim on that content since it was produced by artificial intelligence. So where does that come from? You know, they just don't do this off the cuff and just make a rule, you know, pull it out the sky. And so here's the rule.

Actually, this comes from a court case, and it's Na versus slater, and it's known as the monkey selfie case. That's a fun name. And this was several years ago. I mean, if this case took place well before artificial intelligence came onto to the scene, and what happened there was that a wildlife photographer was in Indonesia at a wildlife preserve photograph the crust Monkeys. And the photographer left his camera sitting,

I don't know where. But he left it sitting and 1 of the Mac cox by the name of Na, pick up the camera and amazingly enough started taking selfies of itself, and the photographer came back to the United States and took those photographs and published them and a book that the photographer was selling. Well, Peter, people for ethical treatment of animals jumped down as next friend to New and said, you're violating the copyright.

Because No took those photographs and you didn't so you're violating the animals copyright. So the case went to court, and as it ended up, the court basically decided that a monkey cannot own a copyright because the statute specifically states that a copyright is produced by a person. And that's where this came from because the monkey is not a person then the monkey can't own the copyright. Therefore, the wildlife photographer could use those photographs in the book.

And as it turned out that the photographer made kind of a settlement with Pe and donated some money or something? Because the long and short of it is that if you use artificial intelligence,

created content in your podcast, 1 of the ways to avoid the liability would be to do some changes just use that Ai generated content as inspiration and make changes to the content so that you can call it your own, make it your own in other words. The question that came to mind though, while you were talking was k. Ai is not human, obviously. But it's a language model based on other people's works. Is that a problem? Meaning maybe a snippet of this or a snippet of that that

came from somebody else? Well, I don't know I guess, the way I understand large language models is that they use artificial intelligence to assess the probabilities of 1 word or 1 letter actually words, I think, following another word. And use those probabilities to put together intelligence sentences. So it shouldn't be somebody else's content because the L uses probabilities to create the content and doesn't actually copy content. So it just learns off of how other

people speak. Right? Yeah. Actually, it's the simple way to put it. That's what it does. Well, I like to be simple. Over tech people. You know, sometimes, you know, especially thai I have a problem where we get too geek and, you know, sometimes you gotta bring it down to normal people level. Yep. I couldn't get pretty geek used. Oh, yeah. For sure. There are court court cases out there are going on right now to clarify some of the issues about artificial intelligence and copyright.

So over time, these issues should sort themselves out. And also there's legislation probably being drafted or considered that will reconsider some of these issues in terms of ownership of content produced by artificial intelligence. So, we just have to keep up on what's changing? Are there new laws? Are there new precedent set by court cases? So, you know, we just keep our ears and eyes open and see what happens. A lot of us are using Ai images.

And Those I think are pretty good because they're not to direct copies of somebody else's imagery. Just in my head, that seems like it's a little safer than the text. Yeah. If somebody looks in an image and says, and it looks like the photograph that I took on that I own, Mh even though it may remotely resemble the photograph that the human being took and owns, like still could be a challenge to your Ai produced content, your picture that

you produce with Ai. But, yeah. You know, copyright always been a thing in podcasting, you know, for at mailing music.

Yeah. Seemed to be the the big sticky 1, and nobody's ever really got that sacred out, at least for the licensed music. Know, I can't remember who he was. Just died recently, but 1 of those guru guys he he actually did jet a license for taking care of business as his theme on but he had to jump through so many hoops to get that signed off, and he was successful at. I and I don't know if, you know, he was completely successful, but he never got sued. Brian Eb. You remember him.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. He plays some copyright in music, and that's so far knock on wood so good. But he plays cover versions of other people's songs. Even though those cover versions are also copy written and but I think he pays a lot in in royalties or whatever that is the fees to be able to do that. As far as I know, they're are the only 2 that I remember being able to do the

music part. Yeah. Well, you know, the issue here comes into play is music created by the artificial intelligence and there are Ai out there that will create music and do a heck of a job. I, I've played with the 1. I can't think of the name of it, but created some music and did a create, dogg on a good job of creating music. Or if it sounds like somebody else's music, you could be on hook for

a copyright violation. Adam and Dave played a song that was completely Ai generated, and I mean, it sounded pretty good. Fooled Adam. So... You, He he's the Dj guy. So that was pretty interesting. I use Ai a little bit. I use our tools here at Blueberry for show notes mainly. I know on this show Cathy Mckenzie use Ai to generate the show notes and works out pretty good. I think the risk is in terms of your legal liability. I think the risk is fairly small. Because do they know you're using Ai?

And if they know that, then are they gonna take it to court Or they gonna challenge you on 2 or 3 paragraphs of showing oats. I

mean like like what? Yeah. Likely not. Yeah the other same with Ai is authentic voices are gonna be more important in the future because, you know, who knows whether you know what you're listening to is Ai. And as it gets better, talking about the audio itself. The deep fakes can be... But they can be challenging? Is it real or is it not? Is it real or is it member? Be that commercial? Oh, yeah.

A lot of times you could tell. You know, I watch a fair amount of Youtube, and there's a lot of Youtube videos out there that if you really didn't know what you were listening for you know was Ai, the voice over, but, you know, some of them are really, really good. Yeah. I listen to some of those Youtube videos and the voice over is produced by Ai, and it's pretty good, but then all of a sudden here comes a word that the Ai totally mispronounce and it's common word. You know, I

think, well, that's an Ai. Produce the content. Yeah. I listening to some aviation ones. They... You know, like, they'll say for a fighter jet, they'll say the f 111 instead of the F 01:11. Yeah. There's something like that. And then you're like, oh, that's an ai. Really. But Yeah. You know, the more we use it the more all the legal realities will get worked out. I'm sure that you were saying. And, yeah. I think at this current time, everything's seems to be okay. Now, I have a

question. Should we be claiming, at least letting people know that that's something is Ai generated? Well, I think that's up to the content producer. Mh okay. That's their content. And, you know, You, we we don't we don't dictate how they produce their content. We don't want to what want no business in that. Right. No. I was just curious if it would be a good idea, but, I guess, probably not, not necessary anyway. Yeah. If

they... If if our customers wanna include that and and their show notes or in their podcast, I'm fine. I guess, we don't wanna be there to dictate how you do it. Yeah. He was so I was playing on with see it's des script, and, where... Where you can clone your voice, and, you know, that was pretty rudimentary entry. And I did a an entire episode. Of, you know, with with a clone voice. You could... You know, it sounded like me, but there was no soul behind it. Yeah. It, you know, it was very

flat. You know, And I I know you can probably train train Ais for your voice that sound way better. Obviously, because I've heard them. But you know, it was kind of fun, playing with it, but I I wouldn't use it myself for... Yep. Because I think the authentic voice is still gonna be at a premium. Especially, you know, the more and more of this Ai generated stuff we get. You know, I'm just thinking Youtube, but podcasting as well.

You know, III think it's gonna be more valuable to you have authentic voices at least, You know, Look Wrong with show notes and whatnot? The the the question is, can can you train Ai to put emotion? Yeah Like the inflection that I just use. Can you train eye Ai to put a motion in your voice? Yeah. So of them are getting pretty good. Yeah. But, you know, Course, then they'll probably

get that slightly off. You know, like, when you're generating images, you ever notice this that it can't spell, You know, if you wanna put text in an image. No. Yeah. It never can sp. You know, I've tried 2 or 3 different ones, and, you know, they they what they do is they try to cram letters to fill the space and and sometimes they add extra loans or take some out or drop off. Like they said it's a it's a whole new world, man. Yeah for sure. Not perfect yet, But just

wait. Yeah. And as I've heard many people say, we're using the worst Ai you're ever gonna use right now. Yeah. I'm still pretty okay. So, Barry, do you I think we have it all covered or do do you have anything else you'd like to add?

Well, 1 1 last kind of interesting point that that may indicate the direct that the United States may go in in terms of copyright and Ai. And that is, if you're in Japan and use Ai to produce your content, then that Ai produced content is yours, and the Japanese recognized you as owning that content even though it was generated by Ai. So this... You know, that that may be the direction we're going in.

I don't know. But it's 1 of those things that I'm sure people are seriously considering as they look at the issues here involved. So Now, they had just 1 last point there Mike. That's what I had, and that's all all I had for now. No. Very good. Yeah. And like I said, we're sure to get this all worked out over the years and, you know, Bs, what court cases come up and how they get resolved and what the legislature does and and all of that. But thanks for being on today and

Yeah. You you bet, my pleasure. Glad to be here. Alright. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you next week. Thanks for joining us. Come back next week. And in the meantime, head to pot cast insider dot com for more information to subscribe, share and read our show notes. To check out our latest suite of services and learn how blueberry can help you leverage your podcast visit blueberry dot com. That's blueberry without the ease. We couldn't afford the ease.