Hong Kong lawmakers have expressed doubt about the feasibility of a government-proposed โopt-outโ mechanism to protect copyrighted works from training artificial intelligence (AI) models, while one suggested the move may undermine the development of the technology.
But government officials defended their proposals on Tuesday, saying they were โreasonableโ and would help facilitate AI development in the city.
Lawmakers had scrutinised proposed safeguards following the results of a public consultation on amendments to the Copyright Ordinance.
The government received 62 written submissions during the public consultation on the amendments, including 24 from copyright owners or their organisations. The consultation ran from July to September last year.
Officials said that while they did not deem it necessary to implement specific copyright protections for AI-generated works, they would move forward with introducing a โtext and data mining [TDM] exceptionโ to the ordinance.
The exception, if passed, would allow for the โreasonable useโ of copyrighted works for computational data and analysis processing used in training AI models.