The AI sector faces a copyright crisis similar to the Napster era

IPO documents released by Anthropic warn that the AI models developed by the company could pose existential risks to humanity, while concerns grow that the intellectual property regime underpinning the software world is being shaken across the industry.

The capabilities of AI models facilitate the copying and pirated use of software through reverse engineering, threatening commercial software business models. Microsoft Xbox CEO Asha Sharma pointed to an epidemic of software piracy where games are rapidly cracked and run on unsupported hardware.

This situation is likened to the Napster era, which deeply affected the music industry in the early 2000s. The Napster process, which opened copyright to debate through peer-to-peer file sharing, led to the industry's evolution into platforms like Spotify and YouTube. Similarly, AI companies are currently facing intense copyright lawsuits.

Assessment: This transformation in the sector increases the risk of software becoming open source, while the reverse engineering and release of open-source versions of US models by Chinese labs (such as MoonshotAI's Kimi K3.1 Pro model) further increases the pressure on closed-circuit AI laboratories.