Tech news this week: AI copyright, cloud and cyber insurance

On this week's program, host Antone Gonsalves speaks with T. Ravichandran, associate dean for research at the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, about the risks of third-party AI in business. Then, TechTarget reporter Esther Ajao explains Nvidia's latest generative AI play and TechTarget reporter Arielle Waldman details the cybersecurity challenges of cyber insurance companies.

Third-party AI copyright concerns

It's a good idea to step back and evaluate the risks of third-party AI in business. One risk to consider is intellectual property rights. Generative AI systems like ChatGPT aggregate content from the internet from many different creators, and it's not always clear who owns the copyright of the content it generates from that.

"You might hire a third party to develop some content for you. Usually you provide a contract that says the IP of the third-party content gets transferred to you as a company. But, if the third party had generated it using AI, it's not clear whether ownership of IP is yours," Ravichandran said.

Copyright laws need to be revisited to address the growing popularity and use of generative AI tools.

"Right now, we have the fair use doctrine in the U.S., which has some leeway that allows organizations to use content that is out there in a reasonable way," Ravichandran said. "But it's not clear that will be sufficient to protect companies from potential lawsuits because they are using generative AI."

Until new lines are drawn, businesses need to be careful in navigating the legal gray areas.

Nvidia's AI cloud

Nvidia unveiled cloud services for building generative AI models at this week's developer conference. Incorporated in those cloud services are the following:

• NeMo, a large language model that can cite sources and correct errors.
• Picasso, an image-based generative AI tool that works with stock image providers.
• BioNeMo, a generative AI service for drug discovery.

"[Nvidia] emphasized that they are providing a place for developers to create their own AI models," Ajao said.

Nvidia has developed these generative AI platforms with IP rights in mind.

"By partnering with Getty, by partnering with Adobe, Nvidia is helping develop this respect for artists," Ajao said. "These artists have already given their work to these stock providers. I believe [the stock providers] are giving whatever they get from the creation of these generated images, or part of the revenue, to artists."

By moving into the generative AI cloud space, Nvidia becomes both a competitor and hardware supplier to Microsoft and Google.

The trouble with cyber insurance

The cyber insurance market is expanding exponentially, driven increasingly by ransomware response. As threat actors' extortion demands become more ruthless, cyber insurers have to become more involved in negotiating the payments and helping with recovery. Enterprises are worried that insurers might have too much influence over payment, and that they might be overpaying attackers.

Another concern is the notification requirements following the attack.

"In some cases, insurers require enterprises to notify the carrier before law enforcement and incidence response teams. That can be a problem if companies are being penalized for notifying law enforcement first," Waldman said. "Contacting intelligence and collecting intelligence as quickly as possible can be critical."

Insurance companies are also tightening policies and trying to address enterprise vulnerabilities with basic security hygiene instead.

"Some security experts say there's actually been a decrease in attacks because companies are being forced to implement these basic security controls," Waldman said.