Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and John Curtis (R-Utah) introduced the Copyright Labeling and Ethical AI Reporting (CLEAR) Act, bipartisan legislation that would protect the intellectual property rights of creators and encourage transparency in the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The bill would require companies to disclose their use of copyrighted work to train generative AI models, implementing ethical guidelines and protections to promote transparency.
“While AI has the potential to improve our lives and change the way we work and innovate, we need a unified approach to implementing guardrails that protect the work and livelihoods of all workers, including artists and creators. Human creativity is the foundation of our cultural and creative economy, and it plays a vital role in shaping our society, our stories, and our shared experiences. I’m proud to introduce this bipartisan legislation with Senator Curtis, which takes an important step toward ensuring transparency in the development of AI models and making sure creators are fairly compensated for their work,” said Senator Schiff.
“Congress must help encourage AI innovation, but not without transparency and accountability. The CLEAR Act strikes the right balance by protecting creators’ intellectual property while providing clear expectations for companies. By shedding light on how generative AI models are trained, our bipartisan legislation will help build public trust for emerging technologies and foster the best of American creativity,” said Senator Curtis.
Specifically, this legislation seeks to:
- Require a notice be submitted to the Register of Copyrights prior to the public release of a new generative AI model with a sufficiently detailed summary of all copyrighted works used in building the training dataset for that model;
- Require the Copyright Office to establish a publicly available online database of notices filed;
- Impose civil penalties for any failures to submit required disclosures and take steps to prevent the use of nondisclosed works from being used to train the model; and
- Apply retroactively to generative AI models already available to consumers.
The bill has been endorsed by the American Federation of Musicians, American Society for Collective Rights Licensing (ASCRL), American Society of Composers Authors and Publishers (ASCAP), Artists Rights Alliance, Authors Guild, Black Music Action Coalition (BMAC), Bria, Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), Center for Journalism & Liberty at Open Market Institute, Concept Art Association, Copyright Clearance Center, Council for Innovation Promotion (C4IP), Department for Professional Employees AFL-CIO (DPE), Directors Guild of America (DGA), Global Music Rights (GMR), International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers (STM), Music Artist Coalition (MAC), Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI), National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA), National Music Publishers Association (NMPA), Professional Photographers of America (PPA), Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), Society of Composers and Lyricists (SCL), Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC), Songwriters Guild of America, Songwriters of North America (SONA), SoundExchange, Television Academy, Writers Guild of America East (WGAE), Writers Guild of America West (WGAW), American Association of Independent Music (A2IM), and the Recording Academy.
Senator Adam Schiff first introduced this legislation as a Member of the House of Representatives in 2024.
Full text of the bill is available here.
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