Dec 27 (Reuters) - The new year may bring pivotal

developments in a series of copyright lawsuits that could shape

the future business of artificial intelligence.

The lawsuits from authors, news outlets, visual artists,

musicians and other copyright owners accuse OpenAI, Anthropic,

Meta Platforms ( META ) and other technology companies of using

their work to train chatbots and other AI-based content

generators without permission or payment.

Courts will likely begin hearing arguments starting next

year on whether the defendants' copying amounts to "fair use,"

which could be the AI copyright war's defining legal question.

Tech companies have argued that their AI systems make fair

use of copyrighted material by studying it to learn to create

new, transformative content. Copyright owners counter that the

companies unlawfully copy their works to generate rival content

that threatens their livelihoods.

OpenAI, Meta, Silicon Valley investment firm Andreessen

Horowitz and others warn that being forced to pay copyright

holders for their content could cripple the burgeoning U.S. AI

industry. Some content owners began voluntarily licensing their

material to tech companies this year, including Reddit, News

Corp ( NWSA ) and the Financial Times.

Reuters licensed its articles to Meta in October.

Other copyright holders, such as major record labels, the

New York Times ( NYT ) and several best-selling authors continued to

press their claims or filed new lawsuits in 2024.

AI companies could escape U.S. copyright liability

completely if the courts agree with them on the fair use

question. Judges hearing the cases in different jurisdictions

could reach conflicting conclusions on fair use and other

issues, and multiple rounds of appeals are likely.

An ongoing dispute between Thomson Reuters and former legal

research competitor Ross Intelligence could provide an early

indication of how judges will treat fair use arguments.

Thomson Reuters - the parent company of Reuters News -

alleged that Ross misused copyrighted material from its legal

research platform Westlaw to build an AI-powered legal search

engine. Ross denied wrongdoing, invoking fair use.

U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas said last year that he

could not decide before a jury trial whether Ross made fair use

of the content. But Bibas canceled the scheduled trial and heard

new fair use arguments in November, which could lead to a new

ruling on the issue next year.

Another early fair use indicator could come in a dispute

between music publishers and Anthropic over the use of their

song lyrics to train its chatbot Claude. U.S. District Judge

Jacqueline Corley is considering fair use as part of the

publishers' request for a preliminary injunction against the

company. Corley held oral arguments over the proposed injunction

last month.

In November, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon in New York

dismissed a case from news outlets Raw Story and AlterNet

against OpenAI, finding that they failed to show they were

injured by OpenAI's alleged copyright violations.

The outlets' cases differ from most of the other lawsuits

because they accused OpenAI of illegally removing copyright

management information from their articles instead of directly

infringing their copyrights. But other cases could also end

without a determination on fair use if judges decide that

copyright owners were unharmed by the use of their work in AI

training.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)