Haynes Boone Partner Eugene Goryunov was quoted in The Tennessean discussing the difficult balancing act between freedom of expression and illegal AI content.
Read an excerpt below:
Eugene Goryunov, a Chicago-based lawyer at Haynes Boone who specializes in intellectual property rights and AI issues, said the line between freedom of expression and illegal content is “difficult” when considering AI — especially for the average person.
“The question is ‘Where do you draw the line?’” Goryunov said. “This is prime for a First Amendment debate. Everyone knows freedom of speech — it’s incredibly important, but it's not an absolute right. Hate speech, harassment speech, speech like that is not protectable. So, the question is, is the publishing of obscene images that are fake under the umbrella of protectable speech? Because what happened to Taylor Swift is horrible and deplorable. But is it illegal?”
According to Goryunov, while there is a significant lack of regulation of AI at the federal level, states across the country already have various laws in place for situations such as Swift’s. But those laws might not be enough in the future.
“Many states have laws that say if you know the person who's publishing or creating traditional bad content, you have a cause of action after that,” he said. “The problem is, however, these laws weren't exactly created with deep fakes in mind. They were created with the revenge (porn) context.” …
But for the average person who is victimized by harmful AI content and does not have an endless cash flow to find an online content creator, Goryunov said this is where both law and technology need to step up.
“That is a real and big problem,” he said. “Which is why a lot of content software manufacturers are coming up with ways to create a digital watermark. Human beings can't see it, but if you were to open a JPG file’s code, you'd be able to see a lot of code in the beginning of the image that doesn't get processed by the image display software. It’s like a fingerprint — and that fingerprint could be used to fingerprint material that gets published online.”
To read the full article in The Tennessean, click here.
