Generative AI Is Terrific, But Is it Really Legal? A Morton L. Mandel Conversation

As of August 2025, ChatGPT reportedly had over 800 million active users worldwide. Other generative AI technologies, such as Anthropic’s Claude, Meta’s Llama, Google’s Gemini, and Midjourney’s system, are also widely used by businesses, researchers, and everyday people. While these technologies offer significant societal benefits, they also carry risks.

There are currently more than forty lawsuits that are challenging the legality of generative AI technologies, with developers accused of training their systems on copyrighted content. What will happen if they lose these lawsuits? What will it mean for those of us who have come to rely on these systems? Is there some way to reach a compromise so that the technologies can be legal while paying some compensation to copyright owners? And if no such compromise is reached, will our ordinary uses of them be illegal too?

Please join us for this program being hosted by the American Academy’s Berkeley Committee to help our community gain understanding about the technologies and their related legal issues.