Textbooks giant Pearson is currently taking legal action over the use of its intellectual property to train AI models, chief executive Andy Bird revealed today as the firm laid out its plans for its own artificial intelligence-powered products.
The firm laid out its plans on how it would use AI a week after its share price tumbled by 15% as American rival Chegg said its own business had been hurt by the rise of ChatGPT.
Those plans would include AI-powered summaries of Pearson educational videos, to be rolled out this month for Pearson+ members, as well as AI-generated multiple choice questions for areas where a student might need more help.
Bird said Pearson had an advantage as its AI products would use Pearson content for training, which he said would make it more reliable.
However, he also added that the business was also monitoring the situation regarding other businesses using Pearson content to train its AI. He said Pearson had already sent out a cease-and-desist letter, though did not say who it was addressed to.
“We’re committed to protecting that IP and we’re following developments in fields such as music and photography with great interest,” he said.
“We take great efforts, and will continue to do, to protect our IP. We are in litigation with a company and have sent a cease-and-desist letter, but I won’t go into any further specifics.
“We’ve also been approached to license our IP and at the time decided not to go down that route. But there may be benefits of licensing our IP at certain circumstances.”
Bird also said it was usually easy to tell what a large language model such as ChatGPT has been trained on, because “you can ask it”.
Bird also sought to point out a difference between Pearson and Chegg, which focuses more on homework assistance.
“They are in a very different business to us,” he said. “We see a great differentiator between what Chegg are offering and what Pearson+ are offering.
“We’re in the business of helping you learn and improve your skills, not in the business of answering.”
He added that - as Pearson was in the business of learning - its products would be hard to replace.
“If all we had to do was read a set of facts in order to learn, there’d be no need for schools, colleges and teachers.”
Pearson shares are up 13.3p to 831.6p today. They are currently 3.8% below where they opened this time last week, before the steep slide sparked by Chegg’s warning.
