S. Korea plans AI copyright guidelines for fair compensation to news outlets

[Photo by Yonhap]

The South Korean government has outlined plans to establish guidelines ensuring fair compensation for news content used as training data by AI developers. These guidelines, aiming to be finalized by the end of this year, were announced during an emergency ministerial meeting on economic affairs held in Seoul on Wednesday.

The ‘Data Economy Activation Initiative,’ disclosed during the ministerial meeting, encompasses details concerning the utilization of news content from media outlets as part of AI learning data. The proposed AI copyright guidelines under the initiative will address copyright infringement concerns involving AI developers and owners of AI training data.

“Considering news content as recognized intellectual property, we are reviewing mechanisms to ensure fair compensation when utilized as AI training data,” said an official from the Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism.

Moreover, the initiative suggests an increased accessibility to original video data captured during operations of autonomous vehicles and robots. Additionally, there are prospects for expanded access to anonymized healthcare insurance data, potentially enabling diverse research such as analysis of health factors among patients with conditions like hypertension and diabetes.

The government also aims to implement a regulatory sandbox framework, allowing practical experimentation regarding the utilization of original video data from autonomous vehicles and mobile robots starting this month. Furthermore, non-identifiable synthesized medical data for AI learning purposes is slated to be provided to the private sector from December.