Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Thursday called for the repeal of a law that shields major tech companies from lawsuits over content created on their platforms amid the rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which provides tech firms with immunity from legal challenges over user-generated content, has increasingly come under pressure as society has grappled with the impacts of social media and, more recently, AI.
Hawley took aim at the training of AI models on copyrighted works Thursday, arguing the solution is to open up tech firms to legal liability.
“The AI large language models [LLMs] have already trained on enough copyrighted works to fill the Library of Congress 22 times over,” the Missouri Republican said at the National Conservatism Conference. “Let me just put a finer point on that — AI’s LLMs have ingested every published work in every language known to man already.”
“As I look out across the room and see many authors, all of your works have already taken,” he continued. “Did they consult you? I doubt it. Did they compensate you? Of course not. This is wrong. This is dangerous.”
He argued there should be property rights assigned to specific forms of data and legal liability for the companies that use it. The senator also called for the full repeal of Section 230.
“Open the courtroom doors,” Hawley said. “Allow people to sue who had their rights taken away from them, including suing companies and actors and individuals who use AI.”
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) indicated earlier this year that they were planning to introduce legislation to sunset Section 230. Such proposals have been put forward in previous sessions but have yet to gain momentum.
