Overheard my agency's legal counsel say 'we don't need to worry about AI training data yet' and I froze

I was grabbing coffee last Tuesday and heard our head lawyer telling a junior associate that using client content to train internal AI tools is probably fine since nobody's sued yet. This is a mid-sized agency in Phoenix with about 40 people. I've been reading about the Getty Images lawsuit and the whole deal with copyrighted material being scraped. My question is - are we just waiting for one big client to find out their campaign copy is part of some model? Has anyone else had their agency's legal team brush off this stuff?

3 comments

3 Comments

jamesfox4d ago

Man that lawyer's logic sounds like driving without a spare tire because you haven't gotten a flat yet. My cousin works at a small marketing firm in Tucson and their legal guy said pretty much the same thing about using old blog posts to train their AI chatbot. I know Getty is a special case with its own rules but it feels like these lawyers are betting the house on nobody paying attention. Your mileage may vary of course but I wouldn't want to be the one explaining to a client why their confidential pitch ideas got mixed into some model's brain.

blake6914d ago

So is his argument basically that because nobody's sued yet over blog posts being scraped, it's totally fine until someone actually does?

averywilliams3d ago

That line about "betting the house on nobody paying attention" really got me lol. I used to think this whole scraping thing was just companies being lazy with their training data and nobody would actually care enough to sue. But yeah, you're right - it only takes one person with a good lawyer and a smoking gun to make this entire house of cards collapse.