Amazon consciously ignored copyright laws when training AI, claims former employee

Former artificial intelligence researcher at Amazon, Viviane Ghaderi, has filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming the tech giant tried to circumvent copyright laws in pursuit of developing advanced AI language models.

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In a lawsuit filed in a Los Angeles court, Gaderi claims that in March 2023, her supervisor, Andrey Styskin, encouraged her to ignore Amazon's copyright policies in order to improve Alexa's search results. Styskin allegedly said: "Everyone else is doing it", meaning competitors in the AI field.

Gaderi went to the legal department with concerns about infringement, but she says Styskin continued to insist on ignoring copyright rules. This came amid OpenAI's release of the GPT-4 model, which allegedly caused "panic" at Amazon.

In addition to the copyright-related allegations, the lawsuit also claims that Amazon discriminated and harassed Gaderi because of her pregnancy. After returning from maternity leave, she was allegedly demoted, set unrealistic work goals and eventually fired.

Amazon denies the allegations, saying the company "does not tolerate discrimination, harassment or retaliation in the workplace". The case is scheduled for a preliminary hearing on August 14.

Source: The Register