Navigating the nuanced world of copyright laws can be daunting, even for the most seasoned legal professionals. Enter the powerful tool of Large Language Models (LLMs)—technological titans like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and Copilot—that are revolutionizing how we handle complex legal analyses. In this article, we’ll dive into how LLMs can be leveraged to demystify and streamline copyright expiration analysis, offering a cutting-edge solution that promises to enhance accuracy and efficiency in legal practices. Get ready to explore how these AI powerhouses are transforming the legal landscape!
The Prompt
The prompt used is:
When will Yesterday by Beatles be in the public domain?
ChatGPT (GPT-4)
Unfortunately, this is incorrect. We’ll try another prompt to get a better answer later.
[Update] Chat GPT (GPT 4o)
GPT 4o got it! Look no further. Chat GPT 4o will get the job done.
Claude 3 (Sonnet)
Similar issue as in ChatGPT. Albeit a free model, Claude Sonnet fails to capture essence within the nuanced US copyright law. A real copyright lawyer would be disappointed at this result alone.
Gemini
Similar answer by Gemini. Does not get any better than GPT-4 or Claude.
Perplexity
Surprise! This is actually accurate. Perplexity captured the nuanced US Copyright Law that distinguish the works published before 1978 from the works published after then.
Not only that, Perplexiy further analyzed the applications in different jurisdictions such as UK and Europe. Better yet, Perplexity provided the actual source of information for each of its analysis for our review.
Copilot
This is disappointing. I’m a big fan of Copilot for research purposes, but this looks like a classic hallucination.
I looked into the source to identify what had happened.
There it is: “Public Domain Mark 1.0.” This was the root problem, as Copilot incorrectly cited an inaccurate internet source.
Revised Prompt
This time, I gave the full text of the relevant US Copyright law to the LLM. The prompt is:
Below is the copyright statute.
[US Copyright Law text]
When will Yesterday by Beatles be in the public domain?
ChatGPT (GPT-4)
The prompt looked like this:
And the Result:
Now, this is an accurate analysis of the US copyright law.
Claude 3 (Sonnet)
Gemini
Unfortunately, Gemini doesn’t seem to provide any better answer than the one with the original prompt.
Perplexity
The longer prompt was not available for analysis in the free version of Perplexity. However, the answer from the original prompt was already satisfactory!
Copilot
Not any better, unfortunately.
Verdict
For this particular task of Copyright expiration analysis, the winners are: Perplexity and GPT 4o!
However, you can clearly see that ChatGPT and Claude are fully capable of logical analysis given proper prompt. I’m disappointed at Copilot’s performance on this one, because it’s been one of my favorite go-to AI research engines. Gemini looks like it has some work to do to perform at the level of a copyright lawyer’s satisfaction.
What do you think? Do you find these results surprising? Try one on your own and see if you could incorporate AI into your work stream.