South Korean tech giant Naver is likely to face a wave of copyright suits from media companies in relation to its AI projects, with claims potentially reaching tens of billions of won, a lawmaker said Monday.
According to Rep. Choi Soo-jin of the People Power Party, Korea's three terrestrial broadcasters are seeking 200 million won ($140,000) each in compensation from Naver and its affiliate Naver Cloud over their unauthorized use of news content to train AI models.
The opposition lawmaker predicted that the final claims would likely rise significantly, as the initial estimates for damages, only partially assessed as of now, exceeded 500 million won already.
In a separate case, the Korean Association of Newspapers filed a complaint with the Fair Trade Commission in April, accusing Naver of copyright infringment related to the use of news articles without permission. Depending on the antitrust agency’s decision, individual media companies are expected to file their own lawsuits.
The complaint filed by the broadcasters’ association said, “Among the data used in developing Naver’s large language model HyperCLOVA — including blogs, cafes, news, comments, Q&A, sources from the National Institute of Korean Language and Wikipedia — news accounted for 13.1 percent,” according to Rep. Choi.
Rep. Choi added that Naver had admitted its AI service learned from news content but had not obtained permission to use it.
Naver has emerged as a key player in Korea's push to become a global AI powerhouse.
The lawmaker also criticized government authorities for their inaction in addressing legal issues surrounding the local AI ecosystem despite this aim.
"As copyright issues surrounding the AI industry are increasingly leading to legal disputes among industries, the relevant ministries have done nothing to improve regulations and creating guidelines,” Choi said. “The National Assembly and the government should take measures to establish copyright exemption requirements related to AI training and a proper compensation system for copyright holders.”
shinjh@heraldcorp.com
