Cecilia Ziniti
Apr 5, 2024
Hello! Another big two weeks in AI, from OpenAI balloon man videos to a new survey finding 46% of US lawyers have used AI for legal work. But first, a couple of GC AI Updates.
Read time: 5 minutes, 34 seconds.
GC AI Updates
Prompt Library
Access your saved prompts and the official GC AI prompt library by clicking the prompts button. We're adding a new one each week. Let us know what you want to see!
Awesome Uses This Week
🐖 This answer to a question about CAN-SPAM that explained it's OK to require the user to re-input their email when they land on the unsubscribe page.
🌟 Feedback of the week: "The AI was able to pick up from my prompt that I wanted this to be a simple loan agreement (It was between related parties). It produced a good first draft. I then asked it for several different repayment terms and it nailed those on the first tries. This whole agreement ended up taking about 15 minutes start to finish of a polished loan document for the client. I think this would have taken about an hour doing the old fashioned way where I would have searched my files for a previous agreement, or looked online for one, and then customized it."
Design Debate at GC AI
When we cite things, should we do it in Blue Book style or is that annoying because we're in house and who does that? What do you think?
The AI, Law, and Tech Update
📚 Big Tech & AI
📦 Amazon invested another $2.75B in OpenAI rival, Anthropic. The FTC was already investigating. Meanwhile, Amazon is developing its own model and will be charging for it in Alexa. The world noticed this week that training computer vision AI for Amazon's Just Walk Out shopping experience requires humans (1000s of people labeling data). [Editors note: in general, to tune AI, you need people, typically in low-cost locations, manually tagging clips, images, loan docs, or whatever needs to be classified.]
The real MVP is ... Accenture? They recorded $1.1 billion from gen AI projects in the last 6 months, more than OpenAI’s annualized revenue: ~$2B.
🎈OpenAI
Shared outputs of its new audio tool, Voice Engine. It can recreate voices from only a 15-second clip. They’re holding its release for fear of misuse.
Made free ChatGPT available without a login. Hope they staffed up trust and safety.
Is developing Stargate, a $100B supercomputer.
Pitched Hollywood studios on using its video engine Sora and releasing cute ones like balloon man below.
Adobe launched GenStudio for AI-made marketing content. Can you spot the teeny-tiny persistent link to Adobe’s Generative AI terms? Also, your editor has mixed feelings about this one. Facebook ads are bad enough already…
📱 Apple began trying to work with Google on AI after Apple’s own pushes to integrate generative AI fell flat. They said they would announce big AI things in June. [Editors note: I do not like my iPhone 15. It stalls, the battery doesn’t last a day, and the camera often pauses to process, which made me miss egg hunt pictures of my nephew last weekend. Boo.]
📚 Political & Regulatory
🇺🇲US
Great NYT deep dive covering AI policy efforts, especially given escalating tensions with China. On May 1, the White House will host 100 tech leaders on AI at the Hill & Valley Forum. (Waiting on my invite... Let me know if you can get me one!) PS - More than 450 companies reported lobbying on AI last year. Was yours one?
VP Kamala Harris announced OMB’s new policy for federal government AI use. The policy establishes minimum risk management practices for safety-impacting and rights-impacting AI and requires agencies appoint a Chief AI Officer and inventory their AI use cases annually.
🏫 Kudos to the city of San Jose for spearheading the GovAI coalition (400 members of 150 local, county, and state governments) putting out great templates, like this excellent AI policy and this AI vendor statement.
🇫🇷 France fined Google $250M for failing to negotiate fair licensing deals with press companies and using articles to train Gemini.
🗳️ Wisconsin now requires political advertisers to disclose the use of AI content.
🎵 Tennessee passed the Elvis Act, the first bill that prevents the use of generative AI to copy a performer’s voice. Meanwhile, "[AI's] assault on human creativity must be stopped," say 200 musicians, including Billie Eilish and the Bob Marley estate, but not including Beyoncé whose new album dropped last Friday and, per your editor, is AMAZING.
AI & IP
📺 Remember OpenAI's CTO talking about training on YouTube videos? YouTube shot back saying it's a violation of the YouTube terms of use. Editor's answer: yep - "you are not allowed to ... modify or otherwise use any part of the Service or any Content except: (a) as expressly authorized by the Service; or (b) with prior written permission from YouTube and, if applicable, the respective rights holders." (Thanks GC AI for the assist.) Interesting to think of Google as a copyright plaintiff here!
AI & Law
🌆 New York City’s government chatbot is giving awful answers, like saying it’s legal to make workers clock out before they clean up (!). Another reason GC AI keeps lawyers in the loop. NYC responded this week by adding disclaimers. That'll fix it?
🌶️ Can David Chang, chef/founder of Momufuku noodle bar, trademark the term "chili crisp", as he's attempting? AI says it's "a challenging path .. due to its descriptive nature and the widespread use of the term." Source.
🏆 A half an hour before my AI class , a lawyer assigned an associate to summarize a settlement. He tried the task with GC AI in class. Later that day, the lawyer emailed me. He'd compared the two. The AI's work was better. Wild.
🙊 Software company Atlassian's legal team wrote a tome on how they love the EU AI Act and published a series of "no BS" compliance templates, including a 26-page (!) doc for reviewing any new AI feature. Weird but ok. Later that day, video software maker Loom (which Atlassian bought for $975 million last year - the 5 foot 11.5" of acquisition prices), sent out a notice email saying their terms of use changed to Atlassian's. I replied asking if they used my data to train AI. Their customer service rep's clear response below impressed me. She should work with the legal team!
Other Notable | Fun
💰Overheard: “Why go for billions when you can make trillions?” - investor, talking about the crappiness of vanilla GPT's UI. The point: OpenAI can leave the application layer to developers like GC AI while they make trillions being the core AI. PS - "vanilla GPT" is the term for general AI not tuned for tasks.
🧑🎓Universities are licensing students’ theses; check out this pitch from the University of Michigan. A thesis is only worth $15, apparently. But the University has since recanted, saying they’ve halted the program and only used consented data. (PS: The years of the papers were 1997–2000, so UMich alumni, maybe you are training AI!).
🍊 What’s your bar exam story? Mine is that I took it 6 months pregnant, craved cara cara oranges in prep, and today I still think of the rule against perpetuities when I eat them. GPT’s bar exam story? That they failed the first time (GPT-3.5), passed the second (GPT-4), and then had people question whether they passed and ran their scores against different states’ cutoffs. Editor's take? Quibbling over percentages misses the point. AI does legal reasoning.
Fun times! Thank you all for your support.
Best,
Cecilia
