NYTimes vs OpenAI: Generative AI and the Law with Cecilia Ziniti, Founder and CEO of GC AI

**Erik Torenberg** (0:00)
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**Cecilia Ziniti** (0:46)
The United States' strong intellectual property protection regime is what gave rise to Hollywood, what gave rise to Silicon Valley.
Oh, hey, I trained my own GPT on all your work and it's been so helpful.
And she's like, okay, thanks. And it's sort of like, how am I supposed to feel about that? Maybe it's not verbatim copying and who knows what it outputs, but even if it rewords the phrases, should there be compensation for that? Of course, in that process, they're going to defend and say, no, it's called the general purpose transformer. The intended use of this device is like a VCR for your own personal use. My prediction is actually that there ends up being a commercial solution to that, where there's some startup that's like, hey, GPT yourself. And then it's literally like, you can get her knowledge from there. They're going to figure out AGI. They can figure out and not have infringement. There's people that have said that they're using GPT 4.5 to actually do the copyright analysis.

**Nathan Labenz** (1:46)
Hello, and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week, we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host, Erik Torenberg. Hello and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. My guest today is Cecilia Ziniti, founder of Gc Ai, an AI assistant for in-house counsel, previously general counsel at Replet and lead counsel on the Alexa team at Amazon, among other roles, and author of some of the most helpful viral Twitter threads that I've read about the legal landscape surrounding generative AI broadly, and about the potentially blockbuster New York Times vs OpenAI case in particular. It's safe to say that legislators, from the founders of the United States, who I learned from Cecilia, did specifically provide for the protection of intellectual property in the United States Constitution. Two of the more recent Congresses that have extended copyright protections and otherwise modified intellectual property law did not anticipate a technology like generative AI when writing the rules that we live by today.
And so it falls to the courts, for now at least, to figure out how to apply an established legal paradigm to an emerging technology paradigm.
To be honest, aside from filing a couple of provisional patent applications over the years, including one just last year which I wrote with the help of GPT-4, this is not an area that I've studied much at all myself. So I brought a ton of questions to Cecilia and proceeded from the most general and basic to the most specific and nuanced. Why do we have intellectual property in the first place? And what are its main branches? What legal frameworks apply to generative AI? What rights do content owners have? Does the New York Times have a good case? Is it really possible that the court could order GPT-4 to be destroyed as the New York Times demands?
How likely are the courts to rule on this question at all versus trying to force Congress to act? Are there any notably good proposals for generative AI law that are not already broadly known? And how will the US position, inform, or perhaps be challenged by different choices that other countries might make going forward? We cover all this and more in this conversation.
As always, if you're finding value in the show, we appreciate it when you share it with friends. This episode, quite naturally, would be for the lawyers in your life. Now, I hope you enjoy this conversation about the relationship between the law and generative AI technology with Cecilia Ziniti. Cecilia Ziniti, technology lawyer and founder of Gc Ai at Get Gc Ai Online, welcome to The Cognitive Revolution.

**Cecilia Ziniti** (4:38)
Thanks, Nathan. Glad to be here.

**Nathan Labenz** (4:40)