Seven data licensing companies have formed the Dataset Protection Alliance (DPA), a trade union aiming to foster responsible and ethical methods for collecting data used to train AI and ML.

The DPA’s members have committed to promoting collaboration, developing best practices, and advocating for the rights of content creators in the rapidly evolving AI and ML landscape.

This follows a flurry of copyright lawsuits aimed at AI companies, with data protection advocates calling for swift legislation to regulate how AI companies collect data en masse to train their models.

Most recently, Sony Music and other major labels issued a lawsuit against two different AI companies which use copyrighted material allowing users to create AI-generated songs.

It is no secret that powerful AI models require a vast amount of data to train on, and AI companies have consistently scraped the internet of data to provide for their ravenous models.

Content creators have been up in arms that they are not getting duly compensated for their work, claiming tha t many companies are breaching copyright law and plagiarising their work.

While tech companies claim that their data harvesting practices are legal, they are also turning to private data sellers as copyright lawsuits continue to raise concerns.

Data licence providers and sellers have therefore evolved into their own market, which brings up other ethical concerns regarding the protection of intellectual property.

The DPA is  made of data licening companies from a range of sectors, including music, image, text, video, and voice.

The founding members include Rightsify, Global Copyright Exchange (GCX), vAIsual, Calliope Networks, ado, Datarade and Pixta AI, representing the US, Germany, and Japan.

“The launch of the Dataset Providers Alliance marks a significant milestone in the growth and maturation of the AI data licensing market,” said Alex Bestall, CEO of Rightsify and GCX.

“By bringing together companies that are at the vanguard of this industry, we can work together to address the unique challenges and opportunities presented by the rise of AI and ML.

“The DPA will serve as a powerful voice for dataset providers, ensuring that the rights of content creators are protected while AI developers get access to large amounts of high quality AI training data.”

The DPA released a mission statement, with intentions to promote transparency and standardisation in the licensing of intellectual property content for AI and ML datasets.

They also intend to educate stakeholders on the importance of responsible and ethical data sourcing and usage practices.

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Facilitating dialogue and collaboration between dataset providers, AI/ML researchers, and industry partners is also a central tenant of the trade group.

Another tenant of the DPA is to advocate for the rights and interests of content creators and rights holders in the AI and ML ecosystem, which is ever expanding.

But encouraging innovation whilst ensuring the protection of intellectual property rights is also a main goal of the DPA, which is not a simple task.

Governments are currently grappling with the demand of further reaching AI systems with compounding pressure from creators to increase copyright protections.