Entertainment Capital Theory has received confirmation from iQiyi that the case of iQiyi suing Conch AI, a subsidiary of MiniMax Technology, for copyright infringement is indeed true and is currently in progress. Due to judicial proceedings, no further specific information can be disclosed. In addition, MiniMax did not respond to Entertainment Capital’s inquiries as of press time.

According to online reports, iQiyi has filed a lawsuit with the Shanghai Xuhui District People’s Court, accusing MiniMax of using iQiyi’s copyrighted materials for model training without authorization, and requiring MiniMax to immediately stop the infringement. , and claimed about 100,000 yuan. MiniMax may file a defense, claiming that the materials involved are public resources or input by users, and try to exempt itself from legal liability based on the principle of technology neutrality.

This is the first disclosed lawsuit initiated by a domestic mainstream video platform against the infringement of an AI video model. The country's first "AI audiovisual works infringement case" occurred in May last year. The individual creator Chen Kun sued a Douyin account for publishing content that was highly similar to his trailer for "Mountains and Seas", and the copywriting and dubbing were exactly the same. The video was released without indicating the source of the work and retaining the signature of the plaintiff.

I don’t know which dramas on iQiyi are involved.

It is reported that the subject of this lawsuit is Conch AI. Its current functions include text interaction, video generation and music generation, but it does not have image generation function. It is speculated that this case may involve video generation functions.

MiniMax is regarded as one of the six leading large model developers in China. In addition to Conch AI, MiniMax’s other well-known products also include companion products, such as domestic Hoshino and foreign Glow.

Although it involves a domestic company, the news was first exposed by an unknown foreign media. Mlex, which first broke the news, is a British intellectual property news website that describes itself as having "reporters covering global legal and regulatory hot spots, with 15 bureaus in North America, Latin America, Europe, the UK and Asia-Pacific." When the news emerged this morning, there was no other more authoritative source of information, and a search for Mlex on Wikipedia could not find its entry.

This afternoon, iQiyi confirmed to Entertainment Capital that the case is true, and stated that since the case is still in the preliminary legal process stage, no more information can be disclosed. At the same time, other channels such as Jiemian’s Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily also confirmed the matter.

Similar to other large-scale generated models in China, Conch AI’s user agreement contains various disclaimers. However, like other generative models, the training process of Conch AI will inevitably involve a variety of data from all walks of life.

In early December this year, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television issued a "management tip" on the so-called "AI magic transformation" phenomenon, requiring relevant provincial bureaus to urge short video platforms within their jurisdiction to investigate and clean up AI "magic transformation" film and television dramasThe short video: "Conduct self-examination on large models or AI special effects functions developed by their respective platforms, strictly access and monitor various related technology products used and disseminated on the platform, and make significant reminders on AI-generated content."

Management tips pointed out that these AI "magic transformation" classics include "The Legend of Zhen Huan" transformed into a "gunfight movie", "A Dream of Red Mansions" transformed into a "martial arts drama", Sun Wukong riding away on a motorcycle, etc. They also believe that these videos are intended to gain traffic, blaspheme classic IP without any boundaries, impact traditional cultural cognition, are contrary to the spiritual core of the original work, and are suspected of constituting infringement.

At that time, there were tutorials on the Internet that related Conch AI to the "magic modification" of "The Legend of Zhen Huan", believing that it could use the scenes of the show to quickly generate modified clips. (The copyright of "The Legend of Zhen Huan" is currently in the hands of LeTV. LeTV distributed the broadcast rights of the show to Youku in 2018.)

Entertainment Capital tested several of the top domestic video generation tools and found that , using the method of converting pictures to videos, first and last frames, and putting screenshots of classic TV series or popular dramas, sometimes the picture can be generated normally without being rejected. But when text prompts are used directly to generate scenes of a certain movie, TV series or a certain character, they will be intercepted.

A legal person who requested anonymity told Entertainment Capital that if the copyright owner wants to remove certain content, or if the party’s information is abused by AI and wants to exercise the “right to be forgotten,” they can set up guardrails. accomplish.

A recent example is that ChatGPT was found to be refusing to answer questions about specific names, such as who "David Mayer" was. After a search by the media, it was found that the names of the people who were refused to answer had been improperly disclosed by the large model, or mistakenly associated them with certain events. After legal procedures were carried out, the results were generated and the request about them was removed. A few days ago, Anthropic reached an agreement with music giants such as Universal Music Group, Concord Music Group and ABKCO, prohibiting Claude from copying or creating lyrics based on copyrighted material.

However, it is more difficult to eliminate or strip certain copyrighted content from the training level. Previously, Mustafa Suleiman, head of Microsoft's AI department, said in an interview that using Internet content for training is 100% "fair use" without prior consent from the rights holder: "I think that for those who have already The social contract around content on the open web since the 1990s has been fair use by anyone. You can copy it and use it to recreate and reproduce. You can also call it 'free software', which is our understanding."

Under the influence of some ongoing lawsuits, OpenAI has claimed that it will. Develop a dedicated tool that allows artists to cherry-pick their copyrighted content and ask OpenAI to exclude it from model training. This tool was promised to be released in 2024. However, a year later, the development priority of this project has been pushed back and it has not yet been officially announced.roll out.