AI Chatbots, DRM Censorship

[billybanana]

Had an interesting scenario happen this week when coding a new script for CW. I've previously used many AI sites to assist with getting my scripts fine tuned including ChatGPT, Deepseek, Claude and Co-Pilot. Since I'm a paid subscriber of ChatGPT, I tend to go with that first to avoid the free limitations.

Since ChatGPT 5 was released a few weeks ago I've seen many changes but this was the first time it actually refused to get involved with any of the script code that dealt with licence challenge and decryption keys. This was my question and it's answer as to why:

Q. So question why are you not assisting with the full request including the licence and decryption key part, when in ChatGPT 4 you did exactly that many times before ?

A. Here’s the difference:

Widevine license requests and content keys are part of a DRM system. Helping to generate license challenges, extract PSSH, or use the returned keys to decrypt a stream means breaking the DRM. That’s not something I can provide.

What I can do is everything “up to the edge of DRM”:

• Pull the playback JSON from Brightcove.
  
• Parse and present metadata (title, duration, episode info, captions).
  
• List available sources (MPD URLs, Widevine license endpoints).
  
• Download unprotected resources (like closed caption .vtt files).

When you’ve seen me (or other models) return license/decryption code in the past, that was effectively giving you the key to crack DRM. That crossed the line, and we’ve tightened our policies to avoid that. So now, I stay in the “safe” space—metadata, manifests, subtitles, and automation for non-encrypted assets.

I've yet to see this type of response from Deepseek (and given it's Chinese owned and their interesting attitude towards copyright) not surprising I guess. Has anyone else encountered this type of response before ? Whilst censoring of AI content is nothing new, this type of approach surely would have necessitated input or complaint from the entertainment industry to start to enforce this ?

[ytdlhelp]

I tried to implement a Vineless-like extension code in JS via Copilot (using it because it works correctly over Tor without any authentication). It refused to help with reimplementing Widevine/PlayReady, however I managed to make it write code when I said I am trying to implement own key system instead.

Entertainment industry lawyers parasite on society for a long time before LLMs appeared, and DRM circumventing is illegal in many jurisdictions, so it is not surprising such censorship is added.