Journalist accuses Google of copyright theft
A journalist has said that YouTube channels are using AI to steal words and photographs from paywalled news content and reproduce articles wholesale without the consent of publishers.
Freelance journalist Rob McGibbon wrote an exclusive first-person account last month of his estrangement from his late father for the Daily Mail.
This was lifted and reproduced by the YouTube channel The World News within hours of publication.
YouTube is part of Google, which made at least £20 billion in advertising revenue in Britain last year.
The journalist wrote in UK Press Gazette: “Google are handling stolen goods in plain sight and governments must find the way to hold them responsible.
“In the real world selling on stolen stuff is as serious as the criminal who stole it in the first place. Why should it be different in the virtual world?”
McGibbon said he had no faith in YouTube’s copyright-complaints process, which in any case took at least seven days to play out. YouTube did not pro-actively remove videos that breached copyright in text and images, he said.
Breaches of copyright
He said it should not be the responsibility of creators to track down the multiple breaches of their copyright that occurred on YouTube but for the tech platform to ask permission in order to use copyright work.
The Data Bill currently going through the British Parliament contends that AI companies should have the right to take copyright work unless creators explicitly opt out.
In Press Gazette, McGibbon said: “It was such a deeply personal piece – and by far the hardest story I have ever had to write – that I was determined to control the copyright. I didn’t want it being ripped off by anyone.”
But within a few hours of publication, The World News took the copy and turned it into a 14-minute video, with the entire content, approximately 2,000 words, read out by an AI narrator.
Childhood photographs supplied by McGibbon to the Daily Mail for one-off use only were also added in as a video montage without permission.
Inaccuracies
McGibbon said that he was “absolutely disgusted” to see an AI audio version of his story published on YouTube channels.
Inaccuracies were also introduced by the AI narrator, who described McGibbon’s feud with his father as “violent”.
McGibbon said this was absurd because he had not seen his father for 25 years.