AI Japan considers rules on AI news summaries amid ‘free-riding’ concerns

The Japanese government is expected to consider new safeguards to prevent copyrighted material from being improperly used by generative AI services that summarise online news reports and other content to produce answers for users. An expert panel under the Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters approved a draft of the new Intellectual Property Strategic Program in principle on 25 May. The programme includes measures addressing generative AI and growing concerns about how such systems use existing content.

According to the draft, the government plans to "take stock of issues" surrounding AI-powered summarisation services to prevent what it described as the improper use of copyrighted works. The wording leaves room for further discussion, but the focus appears to be on services that generate answers by drawing heavily on news articles and other published material.

In recent years, services based on "retrieval-augmented generation," which combine generative AI with search engines, have spread rapidly. In addition to utilizing data learned previously, these services search for the latest information online and present shortened answers. They are said to be able to provide more accurate and up-to-date information. However, rights holders who created the original content, such as newspaper publishers, fear that users may be satisfied with AI-derived responses, reducing visits to their own websites. There are also concerns about negative impacts on sales of article databases in addition to individual paywalled articles.

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The Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association issued a warning about the growing risks of copyright infringement and "free riding" by generative AI summarisation services. The group called for legal rules requiring AI operators to respect rights holders' opt-out requests. Meanwhile, The Asahi Shimbun and Nikkei Inc. have filed a lawsuit against U.S. startup Perplexity, alleging that its AI search service used news articles without permission and infringed copyright. The companies are seeking damages and other remedies.

While the measures above address the use of copyrighted material, another move by Google may spell the death knell for independent websites such as JREF:

The era of the "ten blue links" is officially over. At its Google I/O conference on Tuesday, Google unveiled an AI-powered overhaul of Search centered around a reimagined "intelligent search box" — what the company describes as the biggest change to this entry point to the web since the search box debuted more than 25 years ago. Instead of returning a simple list of links, Google Search will drop users into AI-powered interactive experiences at times. Google is also introducing tools that can dispatch "information agents" to gather information on a user's behalf, along with tools that let users build personalized mini apps tailored to their needs.

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What it basically means is that Google will continue to syphon off content from websites and display AI-generated summaries without linking back to the original creators. This is already a huge issue with Google's AI summaries. Google's corporate mentality has certainly changed over the decades.

A pimply, idealistic IT student has turned into this:



Allow me to vent steam:

Google is making it increasingly difficult for me to do my copy-editing work. I used to be able to be able to pinpoint a quote from a book from just a few words every single time (e.g., 'Cities at night, I feel' are the first few words from The Information by Martin Amis), which allowed me to check quotes easily. Now, as often as not, I'll get some stupid commentary, such an AI-generated text on how cities might feel at night, and the AI will throw back a question at me.

Lothor said:

Google is making it increasingly difficult for me to do my copy-editing work. I used to be able to be able to pinpoint a quote from a book from just a few words every single time (e.g., 'Cities at night, I feel' are the first few words from The Information by Martin Amis), which allowed me to check quotes easily. Now, as often as not, I'll get some stupid commentary, such an AI-generated text on how cities might feel at night, and the AI will throw back a question at me.

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You mean within Google search? I'm not seeing that unless I'm specifically in AI Mode.

mdchachi said:

You mean within Google search? I'm not seeing that unless I'm specifically in AI Mode.

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The AI junk seems to be default when you do a Google search these days. Still, I've just managed to switch it off when I use a macro to access it directly from Word.