Guardrails needed for AI growth

A visitor asks a question to Doubao, an AI model affiliated with Chinese tech giant ByteDance, during the 2024 Volcano Engine Force Conference in Shanghai in December. The plaintiff took five companies to court, including a cultural media enterprise that had provided recordings of her voice for unauthorized use, an AI software developer and a voice-dubbing app operator. The court found that the cultural media company sent the plaintiff's recordings to the software developer without her permission, and the developer used AI to mimic her voice to create AI-generated products. Because the AI-powered voice mimicked the plaintiff's vocal characteristics, intonation and pronunciation style to a high degree, it was eventually identified as her voice, the court said, ruling that the behaviors of the cultural media company and the AI software developer infringed upon the woman's voice rights under China's Civil Code. In February, a court in Wuhan, Hubei province, also ruled in favor of a netizen whose AI-powered art was used in an Wu Yiqin, a CPPCC National Committee member, said that strengthening copyright protection has become a crucial issue in the development of AI.