[00:00:01] Speaker A: Want to protect your business. The time is near. You've given it heart. Now get it in gear. It's passage to profit with Richard and.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Elizabeth Gearhart I'm Richard Gerhardt, founder of Gearhart Law, a full service intellectual property law firm specializing in patents, trademarks and copyrights.
[00:00:20] Speaker C: And I'm Elizabeth Gearhart. Not an attorney, but I work at Gearhart Law doing the marketing, and I have my own startups.
[00:00:25] Speaker D: Welcome to Passage to profit, everyone.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: The road to entrepreneurship, where we talk with startups, small businesses, and discuss the intellectual property that helps them flourish.
[00:00:35] Speaker D: Before we get to our distinguished guests, it's time for IP in the news. And this week we're going to be talking about Google and a new policy that's obviously designed to encourage people to use AI. And if you've been listening to the show and following, we talk about artificial intelligence frequently. And most of the disputes around artificial intelligence are being worked out in the court system. And so they're trying to decide, well, if AI makes a creation, can there be an inventor or can there be an author to it? And there's a lot of debate about who's going to own this content going forward. So Google has decided that if you use one of their tools, like Vertex or duet, those are two Google AI tools, that they will defend you in a lawsuit if somebody sues you for copyright infringement.
[00:01:27] Speaker C: So the creators that feel like the AI has stolen their creative content and used it to make something new have.
[00:01:33] Speaker E: To go up against Google if they.
[00:01:35] Speaker D: Want to file a lawsuit, right? And this is setting a pretty substantial policy because one small player may be willing to sue another small player. But if Google's going to defend the AI generator, then that makes that kind of lawsuit a lot more expensive and is a real discouragement to pursuing that kind of lawsuit.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Well, there's a lot of conversation around this topic. Like, we were talking to one of the radio personalities and he was saying, but what if somebody takes my voice and generates my voice using AI to promote a product that I don't believe in? What am I going to do about that?
[00:02:07] Speaker F: Right?
[00:02:07] Speaker D: There's still a lot of issues to be worked out. I just think that this policy by Google is really interesting. And we have with us Kevin Sarace. And Kevin is an AI guru. He talks on this topic frequently. Kevin, what are your thoughts about this new policy of Google?
[00:02:22] Speaker F: I think this is an important move, and I think we're going to see it by the big tool makers, if you will. And the reason is they are putting protections into these tools that don't allow you to generate something that you shouldn't and also generate something without attribution, for example. And you know copyright law a lot better than I do. But we all learn from the books that we read. We could read 100 novels and then we go write a novel. Now, we can't write a derivative work, of course, but we can go write a novel, right? And that's not illegal as long as it's ours. But it was informed by everything we read. And I think that you're seeing Google, say, with our image and or text generation, we put the right guardrails around it to not generate a derivative work and not generate something that is exactly the same without attribution, but otherwise you should be protected because you couldn't possibly know everything we trained on, right, I. E. Google. And therefore, you're going to have to trust that they put the right protections in so you can't get sued. And lastly, I think you hit the nail on the head is it's going to make it hard to sue individual users of these tools because Google has a lot of money and a big legal team.
[00:03:29] Speaker D: Well, I think the interesting part, though, is how do you create a tool that really draws the right line between something that's original versus something that relies too much on something that somebody else has already created?
[00:03:44] Speaker F: So how these large language models work, and I think that's one that we can look at, a large language model works by statistically placing one word after another. It has learned a trillion phrases, give or take. And from those trillion phrases, it knows how to build the English language based on the sentence structure of the English language. And then your prompt. So if we said today is Kevin's birthday, it isn't. But if we said that, it would probably respond happy, then what would come after happy? Well, we know birthday and maybe a third word, Kevin. They're the only practical responses. Right? So now if I say, I would like a poem about the weather where it's raining outside in the style of Shakespeare. Well, it kind of knows the style of Shakespeare, right. It's read plenty of Shakespeare. It was attributed as Shakespeare. And so it'll go ahead and write that in that style. Not exactly quoting anything from a book without attribution. So there's been rules put in place to make sure that it doesn't exactly do that. And I think they've tried to put these rules in place so that no one's going to call it a derivative work. Right. So you're not going to grab this novel and just change the names of the people, and it's exactly the same story.
[00:04:53] Speaker D: That's great. And this is the first time I've really ever heard how the AI process works. Steve, what do you think about all this?
[00:05:00] Speaker G: Well, not only am I not an expert on AI, artificial intelligence, I don't even know if I have any real intelligence.
[00:05:07] Speaker D: So it's a big problem for me.
[00:05:09] Speaker G: I'm a dopey jeweler. I could tell you that on our previous website, our previous platform, and our new platform, Artificial intelligence, was built in. And at least at my level, I was slightly disappointed as to what it could do, what it couldn't do, and how much work and how much input it takes. I think it has unbelievable potential. And I think the fact that Google is protecting everyone is obviously that's a game changer. I did a keynote speech at Google a couple months ago about a different topic, and Google is one of the most amazing companies on Earth. The things that they're doing, I don't think we even have a clue what's going to happen in the next three months, six months, a year. I think if we talk a year from now, we'll be in a whole.
[00:05:53] Speaker F: Different world with this.
[00:05:54] Speaker G: AI is just, I just don't know. I don't have the capacity to understand everything that it's going to do.
[00:06:00] Speaker D: My concern with AI is that it's just going to make me lazy.
[00:06:04] Speaker F: Right.
[00:06:04] Speaker D: Because where I used to write out an introduction for a show, now just I ask chat GPT and it writes it for me and it does a really good job.
[00:06:13] Speaker F: Right.
[00:06:13] Speaker D: And if I don't quite like that one, I'll ask it again. I'll get a slightly different version.
[00:06:17] Speaker F: Right.
[00:06:18] Speaker D: So I wonder overall if our ability to generate content ourselves is going to diminish over time.
[00:06:26] Speaker G: Well, one of the things I think we have to worry about too, is just, I think I'm not alone with this. I don't know any phone numbers anymore since I have my iPhone, I used to remember 5100 phone numbers. So I think the fact that anytime something does it for you automates it for you, when you say it, makes you a little stupider, I think, and a little lazier, I think it's true. And that's a concern.
[00:06:46] Speaker D: I mean, that's a great question. The question is, do we really need to know all those phone numbers if we don't have.
[00:06:52] Speaker F: Right. Well, let me give you an example that everyone takes for granted. Now, if that's okay, which is the following. Back in 1985, Excel spreadsheet showed up it's probably the last time anyone did long division by hand, except to teach our students, maybe teach our kids. And we don't seem to rue the day that we couldn't do long division anymore. I mean, we could probably do it, but we don't do it every day. And so Excel became a tool that scared financial people. But pretty quickly, accountants found more work to do, and they became the robot overlords of Excel. But they didn't add up numbers and columns and rows anymore. And so no one looks back and says, oh, I wish I could just add columns and rows. They go, we don't have tools that do that for me. Right?
[00:07:37] Speaker D: I don't know. I've had a few moments when I've missed my log division, but I don't miss walking to Philadelphia. I prefer to drive.
[00:07:44] Speaker G: Right?
[00:07:45] Speaker F: And now we've got these large language models, and that's one part of AI, one small part. But people are talking about chat GPT and OpenAI and things like that, and these large language models are finally a language tool. We've had math tools for 40 years, including the calculator before that, and now we have a language tool, and that's going to make us much smarter about prompting and editing, and probably not as strong at writing from a blank slate. That's true. And maybe that's okay.
[00:08:12] Speaker D: Most of my chat GPT information that I get is written in good grammar. I mean, it's better than what you see on Instagram or Facebook.
[00:08:23] Speaker F: Yeah, the prose is quite good. Way better than ours can be.
[00:08:26] Speaker D: Linda, what are your thoughts here?
[00:08:28] Speaker E: I actually help people write sponsor proposals, and I went to chat GPT and said, write me a sponsor proposal. And it was very underwhelming because it hit some key things that needed to be said. But it didn't really get into the psychology of convincing somebody to make the decision to give you money and underwrite your business or your event or your podcast or whatever. So, unfortunately, it's not there yet with what I do. But I think there are a lot of really good uses for AI. And as we've been talking about, it puts us in a whole different model, because instead of being in creative mode, we become in editor mode. So if I'm going to write an article, let's say, and I do chat GPT, then I just edit it. And I think something is lost a little bit there because I am a high creative and I love creating things, but I think it's good for a lot of things. And the Google, wow. I didn't even know that. So we'll see what happens with Google stepping up like that to protect people.
[00:09:33] Speaker D: Well, it's certainly going to drive AI even further into our lives, I think, if people can use it with little fear of legal repercussions. Kenya?
[00:09:42] Speaker H: Well, I would say the conspiracy theorist in me is a little skeptical. Still only know. I liked the point that Kevin made about Excel and all these other advances. But I think my only issue with AI and its use Is the use of people's likeness.
[00:09:56] Speaker F: Right?
[00:09:57] Speaker H: So when it comes to using people's voices and things to create something in a space where typically it would be a human, I'm also concerned about the necessity for humans right to do daily things and job creation and job loss. So there is a lot of things that I feel like great, this is awesome, great technology. But on the other hand, I'm skeptical because I don't want it to replace what potentially could be opportunities for humans to function and have livelihood.
[00:10:23] Speaker D: Well, those are great questions, and I think with Kevin here, we'll have a chance to get into more detail on those a little bit later in the show. But I guess for now, I would just know AI is here to stay. Whether we like it or not, it's forcing itself into our lives. And if you're not using it and you're in the professional sphere, you're probably going to lose out. And that's just unfortunately, the bottom line there.
[00:10:48] Speaker C: You know who is going to win, though?
[00:10:50] Speaker E: All the lawyers.
[00:10:51] Speaker D: They find a way, don't they? Yes.
Well, speaking of intellectual property, if you have an idea or an invention that you want to protect, contact us at Gearhart Law. We work with entrepreneurs worldwide to help them through the entire process of patenting, trademarking and copywriting. And if you'd like to learn more, you can visit
[email protected] or learn more about Trademarks.com for free consultation or downloadable content.
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Before we go, I'd like to thank the passage to profit team, Noah Fleischmann, our producer Alicia Morrissey, our program director. Our podcast can be found tomorrow anywhere you find your podcast. Just look for the passage to profit show. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and Instagram. And remember, while the information on this program is believed to be correct, never take a legal step without checking with your legal professional first. Gearhart Law is here for your patent, trademark and copyright needs. You can find
[email protected] and contact us for a free consultation. Take care, everybody. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
