This Week in AI: Copyright is Still Catching Up with AI

Artificial intelligence notched another historic first, leaping to the top of one of Billboard's music charts.

"Walk My Way" by Breaking Rust has taken the top spot at Billboard's Country Digital Song Sales Chart, according to USA Today and The Nashville Tennessean. The song had more than 3.5 million streams on Spotify as of this week, the publisher said. The song was released in mid-October. (Note: Time Magazine points out that "because very few people actually buy digital songs anymore, it only takes a few thousand purchases to top the Country Digital Song Sales chart.")

AI music has been improving rapidly over the last couple of years, with some companies like Suno creating technology capable of reproducing songs similar to hits like Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas is You". Artists have broadly criticized this technology, saying it steals from and cheapens their work. While some music companies have begun to strike partnerships with AI companies to create "ethical" AI, that hasn’t stopped the drumbeat of all the other technologies from continuing.

Just like with any other art, the value of Walk My Way is in the eyes of the beholder. Critics like Futurism have deemed it "AI slop" with "generic and uninspired" sound. And as a trained musician myself, I guarantee that if you get enough musicians in a room, they’ll have plenty of criticism for any music they hear. (One word: Nickelback.)

This will likely be far from the last song to hit the streaming charts. What we don't know so much is how many people who listened to the song even knew it was created by an AI, and how they felt before and after being told.

There's also larger questions about copyright that come from a chart-topper.

Two years ago, a US court said AI-generated art cannot receive copyrights. "In the absence of any human involvement in the creation of the work, the clear and straightforward answer is the one given by the Register: No," the court wrote at the time, according to Reuters.

But what about art created with the help of AI? What if AI merely helps with edits? All these questions are still being hashed out, CNBC noted after a court ruling in March.

“Copyright Office’s longstanding rule requiring a human author ... does not prohibit copyrighting work that was made by or with the assistance of artificial intelligence,” the appeals court was reported as saying in its ruling.

CNBC added that the panel said copyrights had been allowed on "works made by human authors who use artificial intelligence.”

ChatGPT getting more personal

Nearly since its launch earlier this year, OpenAI ChatGPT 5 has been criticized for its personality. People who use AI frequently often know that large language models tend to be very agreeable. This is because the companies that make them instruct them to act that way. But not everyone wants that experience.

OpenAI says it's adding a new feature to what it calls ChatGPT 5.1, which will give the technology more personality. OpenAI described this as moving past "one size fits all" AI, allowing people to toggle between a more professional or friendly tone, quirky and playful, and enthusiastically nerdy, and even "cynical."

"We heard clearly from users that great AI should not only be smart, but also enjoyable to talk to," OpenAI wrote in a blog post about the change.

Whether or not this makes much difference will be dependent on how you personally feel when you’re using AI in the first place. Some of us can certainly benefit from the little ego stroke that comes from an AI telling us something positive, but not all of us want that. Axios notes it can lead to bigger problems too: "Sycophancy, the tendency of AI models to adjust their responses to align with users' views, can make ChatGPT and its ilk prioritize flattery over accuracy," the publication wrote in July. Chatbot responses can also potentially impact a user's mental health.

There's also practical questions, like if it's even necessary. AI uses extra energy to generate phrases like "that’s brilliant" or "you’re absolutely right," and though tiny, they can add up across hundreds of millions of users.

AI already consumes mass volumes of energy, and it’s so bad that tech companies are investing in nuclear and other technologies to make up some difference. Google is even going on to next step, proposing computers that live on space satellites and use direct radiation from the sun to help power their AI brains.

These moves are also an opportunity to look at how daily life is changing. AI tools are quickly becoming pervasive at work as much as home, and if we are to be interacting with AI chatbots as often as we check email and social media feeds today, then the personality they take on will likely have an impact on how we all feel.

AI may help reverse blindness

One industry that has unquestionably benefited from the AI revolution has been the world of medicine. AI has helped doctors to more accurately detect cancer, it has helped to predict people's cognitive decline before symptoms appear, and it’s even been used to help invent new medications and treatments. Now, a new study says AI may also help to reverse blindness.

The new report from Popular Mechanics describes how doctors implanted the equivalent of a specialized computer between the lens and retina of the eyes of patients suffering from advanced macular degeneration. That implanted computer was then connected to a set of computer-powered glasses. In the end, 84% of the 38 patients across 17 medical institutions were able to read again.

Photo: Science Corporation

"In the history of artificial vision, this represents a new era," Mahi Muqit, an associate professor at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology and senior vitreoretinal consultant at Moorfields Eye Hospital, said in a press release after having helped lead the study. "Getting back the ability to read is a major improvement in their quality of life, lifts their mood and helps to restore their confidence and independence."

Despite this impressive achievement, researchers say that it won’t be so easy for someone to just replace their eye with a computer. Patients have to undergo surgery on their eye, and the implant can't be activated for about a month, ScienceDaily described in its report. The patients then have to learn how to scan text using the glasses, adjusting zoom and other features. Patients went through "several months of rehabilitation" to adapt to these new systems. And they'll likely need regular support and maintenance, just like with any other artificial body part.

Still, eyes are complex parts of our bodies, and until now, the research leader Muqit noted in his statement, blind patients have never been able to have "meaningful central vision restoration."

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