All kinds of online services are being offered as smartphones become digital assistants that people rely heavily on in their everyday lives. These burgeoning services provide far-reaching channels for digital content creators to show their work. However, this also poses rising concerns over digital content infringement. According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global Innovation Policy Center, global digital piracy costs the U.S. economy US$29.2 billion a year.
Today's digital content infringements occur for the most part in the way that articles, pictures, and images are taken and used without licenses. Video segments being reproduced and/or reused without permission is also a common form of digital content infringement. YouTube, for example, is utilizing AI technologies to detect copyright infringement in user-uploaded videos to protect copyright owners.
According to AiiEyes founder YiChun Lai, who has worked in the e-commerce sector for many years, e-commerce platform operators having their images pirated is not just a matter of intellectual property loss. More importantly, the pirated use of their images might mislead consumers to purchase the products presumably offered by the e-commerce platform, resulting in consumer disputes that should never have happened. AiiEyes' digital image infringement detection solution performs AI-based automated checks of images online, thereby enabling a significant cost reduction. On top of that, AiiEyes also offers advice concerning the compensation claim. Its solution has been adopted by multiple e-commerce companies.
User-friendly interface and reasonable charges
Apart from some people using images without the creator's permission due to their lack of awareness of intellectual property rights, digital image infringements are more often the result of intended acts of piracy. Convenient Internet access makes it easy to snatch a picture online. It's too costly for the content creator to check the omnipresent Internet by himself or herself to catch infringement. The follow-up actions to claim compensation may also be formidable. These allow infringers to keep stealing images from their rightful owners.
The most prominent feature of AiiEyes' digital image infringement detection solution is its easy-to-use interface for automated monitoring. Users only need to upload the images and the system will automatically search the Internet and identify to users the websites that might have potentially infringing images. Concerning the charges, AiiEyes offers a monthly subscription plan based on the number of images users upload. There is also an entry-level version available free of charge.
Lai commented that on top of AI-enabled infringement detection, AiiEyes partners with Chisheng Law Firm to offer legal advice on having the infringing images taken down and pursuing compensation as most content creators do not have the legal expertise to protect their own rights. The aim is to safeguard the copyright owners' intellectual property through a one-stop service.
Impressed with AiiEyes' innovation, AWS JIC provides subsequent technology support
Given today's maturing AI technologies, AiiEyes decided to make use of the AI services Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers right when it was first incorporated. This not only saved AiiEyes from spending time training its own AI model but also accelerated the time-to-market for its innovative solution. With AWS, AiiEyes was able to win several well-known e-commerce customers and it also joined the Startup Terrace Kaohsiung AWS Joint Innovation Center (JIC). The AWS platform provides complete, stable, and reliable cloud services. Moreover, AWS JIC offers cloud resources for free to a certain limit. For these benefits, AiiEyes has been migrating the majority of its services to the AWS platform.
Lai also noted that to cut down the cost it has to pay for the AI services on the cloud platform, AiiEyes is trying to develop its own AI model to reduce operating expenses and raise infringement detection accuracy. AWS JIC is eager to offer technical support and advice on AI algorithms and model training after realizing AiiEyes' needs, which will give AiiEyes a boost for its development going forward.
AiiEyes is currently collaborating with CxC Today, a website hosting the creations of more than 4,000 artists, to help protect content owners' rights to digital assets and brand images. Furthermore, AiiEyes is also endeavoring to apply its image infringement detection technology to video infringement detection to capture opportunities arising from increasing awareness of intellectual property protection worldwide.