Paven Malhotra has been selected among California's Top Artificial Intelligence Lawyers by the Daily Journal. Malhotra is defending AI clients, including OpenAI and Runway, in six major lawsuits that are expected to influence the future of copyright law and the fair use doctrine in relation to AI technology.
Malhotra's interest in AI began with his fascination with the high-quality content produced by foundational model companies, leading him to consider how AI would impact his legal work and the existing legal frameworks. His journey in AI-related legal matters started in early 2023, focusing on advising large language model (LLM) companies on copyright risks, indemnification issues, and intellectual property concerns. The latter part of the year saw a rise in copyright lawsuits, which shifted his focus to litigation.
One of his significant cases involves Runway, a generative AI platform known for its use in the film "Everything Everywhere All at Once." The case, Andersen v. Stability AI, was filed in federal court in San Francisco. Visual artists accuse Runway of using their work without permission to train its AI systems. A recent court decision dismissed some claims under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and California state law, and Malhotra says they aim to defend the remaining copyright claims by arguing fair use.
Malhotra also represents OpenAI in lawsuits brought by national newspapers, including The New York Times, for alleged copyright infringement related to training OpenAI's GPT models. These cases are seen as industry defining, particularly in how fair use applies to modern technologies.
Malhotra identified two key challenges in the litigation: understanding and explaining the technological processes involved in training models, and managing the complex technical discovery issues involved in handling training data and source code.
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