Back in May, OpenAI said it was developing a tool that would allow authors to specify whether they wanted their works to be included or excluded from AI training data. But seven months later, the feature has yet to be released, despite the company promising to do so by 2025.
Back in May, OpenAI said it was developing a tool that would allow authors to specify whether they wanted their works to be included or excluded from AI training data. But seven months later, the feature has yet to be released, despite the company promising to do so by 2025.
The tool, called Media Manager, was supposed to “identify copyrighted text, images, audio, and video,” OpenAI said in May. This was supposed to distract the company’s most vocal critics and potentially protect it from legal issues related to intellectual property, TechCrunch reports .
But people familiar with the matter tell TechCrunch that the tool was rarely seen as a major launch within the company. “I don’t think it was a priority,” said one former OpenAI employee. “I honestly don’t remember anyone working on it.”
A person who is not an employee of the company but coordinates work with it told TechCrunch in December that they had discussed the tool with OpenAI in the past, but there had been no recent updates. (The people declined to be identified publicly because they were discussing confidential business matters.)
And a member of OpenAI's legal team who worked on Media Manager, Fred von Lohmann, moved to a part-time consulting role in October.
OpenAI has still not provided an update on the progress of work on Media Manager, and the company has missed its own deadline of launching the tool "by 2025."
OpenAI is fighting class-action lawsuits filed by artists, writers, YouTubers, computer scientists, and news organizations, all of whom claim the startup illegally learned from their work. The plaintiffs include authors Sarah Silverman and Ta Nehisi-Coates, artists, and media outlets such as The New York Times and Radio-Canada. OpenAI has signed licensing agreements with select partners, but not all creators find the terms attractive.
In a May announcement, OpenAI said Media Manager would use “advanced machine learning research” to allow content creators and owners to “tell [OpenAI] what they own.” OpenAI, which said it worked with regulators to develop the tool, said it hoped Media Manager would “set a standard for the entire AI industry.”
Since then, OpenAI has never publicly mentioned Media Manager.
A company representative told TechCrunch that the tool was “still in development” as of August, but did not respond to a follow-up request for comment in mid-December.
OpenAI has not given any indication as to when Media Manager might launch — or even what features and capabilities it might launch with.
