New trade group formed for AI dataset firms

A GROUP of AI dataset companies have formed what they claim to be the industry's first trade group.

The seven firms - all involved in content licensing for music, video and imaging - have formed 'The Dataset Providers Alliance' and have pledged to have 'ethical data sourcing' at the top of its manifesto.

Founding members of the DPA include German marketplace Datarade, Japanese image platform Pixta, US music dataset specialist Rightsify, and image licensing experts vAIsual.

Formation of the group was triggered by big corporations continually scraping data from the internet in order to train generative AI technologies. However, much of this scraping has ignored many copyrights - an element of creativity the organisations involved in the DPA are keen to preserve.

Rightsify CEO Alex Bestall explained the alliance of companies would be urging members to maintain a focus on lobbying for regulation on licensing and the unauthorised use of people's likenesses.

"Advocacy will be a big part of it because everyone's taken their positions on AI and copyright, but a lot of these battles are yet to be solved and it's going to take a while for them to be," he added.

The DPA whitepaper will be published next month.