Summary

Google has announced an intellectual property indemnity policy to defend users of its generative AI tools against accusations of copyright infringement. This policy aims to reassure customers using Google’s text-to-image features for commercial purposes that they won’t face legal issues and that Google is confident in the compliance of its technology with IP ownership rules.

Introduction

Google has unveiled an indemnity policy to protect users of its generative AI tools from copyright infringement claims. This policy is designed to address concerns regarding intellectual property disputes and encourage enterprise adoption of generative AI.

Main Points

1. Under the new policy, Google assumes the potential copyright infringement risks on behalf of customers leveraging its AI technologies. This covers both the training data used to develop AI models and any machine-generated output created using Google Cloud products like Vertex AI and the coding assistant Codey.
2. The indemnities provided by Google address a major concern for businesses using generative AI. The technology learns by ingesting copyrighted data, which raises the risk of generating infringing content. The training data indemnity protects against claims related to Google’s AI model development practices, while the generated output indemnity covers situations where AI services create potentially infringing text, images, or other media at a customer’s request.
3. Google Cloud executives Neal Suggs and Phil Venables stated that the indemnity protections offer balanced and practical coverage for potential claims, providing customers with the assurance they need to use generative AI safely and confidently.
4. The protections are automatically included in the public service terms of Google’s products. However, there are exceptions, such as synthetic image generation for Google Search and Bard, which are not covered by the indemnity. These exceptions may be addressed in future updates to the terms of service for these products.

Conclusion

Google’s intellectual property indemnity policy aims to alleviate concerns about copyright infringement for users of its generative AI tools. By assuming the potential risks and offering balanced protections, Google aims to support businesses in utilizing generative AI with confidence and without legal issues.