Firms like Meta and a16z admit having to pay billions for training data would ruin their generative AI plans as they fight new copyright rules

• The U.S. Copyright Office is considering updating its laws to deal directly with generative AI.
• Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others with a stake in AI pushed back hard on any possible changes.
• Paying for data would mean “tens or hundreds of billions” in yearly royalty fees, a16z said.

The world’s biggest tech companies really do not want to have to pay for the enormous amount of copyrighted data needed to train the models underlying their generative AI tools.