In the midst of the rapid advancements in generative artificial intelligence, Adweek’s weekly summary provides an overview of the most recent updates, regulatory activities, and business developments in the world of GenAI that marketers need to know.

This week’s news update includes: 

On the policy side

• President Joe Biden signed an ambitious artificial intelligence executive order, the first action of its kind, Monday. For marketers, the most relevant issues from the order revolve around deepfakes (and prevention through watermarking), data privacy protection as AI tools collect more data, and AI in the workplace leading to job loss. These rules are to be implemented by August 2024. Copyright infringement was not included.
  • Some are concerned with the order’s unintended consequences: “If taken too far, unilateral and heavy-handed administrative meddling in AI markets could undermine America’s global competitiveness and even the nation’s geopolitical security,” said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow for the R Street Institute’s technology.

• Holding company IAC, parent to Dotdash Meredith, cautioned the U.S. Copyright Office that the internet will become “unrecognizable,” eroding user trust unless the government takes measures to safeguard publisher-copyrighted content used for training generative AI, per Axios.  

• Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, saw a partial legal triumph against allegations of copyright infringement related to their AI training methods. This is after three artists, such as illustrator Kelly McKernan, sued the AI model in January for copying their original work. On Wednesday, the U.S. district judge dismissed these claims, per AI Business. 

• On Tuesday, News Media Alliance published research finding GenAI models give more credence to articles from certain premium publishers over generic online content. Chatbots often replicated segments of copyrighted articles in their responses, the research found. “It’s an exacerbation of an existing problem,” Danielle Coffey, the president and chief executive of the News Media Alliance told The New York Times. 

On the tech side

• Google brings text-to-image AI capabilities to its Product Studio. This enhancement will let U.S. marketers generate GenAI-driven product images, ranging from basic background visuals to complete scene setups, for free, per TechCrunch. 
• Microsoft puts a price tag on its GenAI offerings. At $30 per month per user, Microsoft launched its 365 Copilot AI assistant to help businesses perform tasks such as summarizing documents, improving Excel analysis, and generating emails. However, its enterprise customers willing to pay the premium price would need to commit at least 300 users to get access to its latest AI product, per The Verge.