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Fatbobman’s Swift Weekly #039 | New Challenges for Creators’ Rights in the AI Era
Weekly Comment
New Challenges for Creators’ Rights in the AI Era
Recently, the head of Microsoft’s AI department made a controversial statement in an interview, suggesting that any content published on the open web could be considered “free software” and could be copied and used by anyone. Unsurprisingly, this view has been widely criticized, but people remain deeply concerned that these highly influential tech giants might attempt to legalize their behavior from a legal standpoint, thereby eroding the rights of original creators.
Rand Fishkin’s latest research reveals a different pattern of data usage. Based on massive data, Fishkin analyzed Google search behavior in 2024 and found that nearly 60% of search traffic flows to Google’s own service ecosystem. Although this proportion is surprising, compared to the practices of generative AI, Google’s model appears to be more creator-friendly. Under Google’s model, original content at least has a chance to receive clicks and traffic; whereas in the response system of generative AI, even if relevant links are provided, the traffic that can be brought to the original author is often very limited due to AI’s summarization of answers, not to mention that in many cases, AI responses don’t even include…
