Post #614379

I'm not a lawyer, maybe you are. I can't fully speak to the legalities at play. But I am a programmer, and speaking technically, AI simply cannot produce an output without consuming other works to be used as training data. In many cases, the training data includes full copyrighted works (images, books, music, etc.) in their entirety. I'm also an artist and musician, and someone who takes the matter of copyright seriously as any person who creates things should. There are cases where it's been ruled fair use. I'm not sure what the relevance of that is. From what I understand, the scope of those judgments are limited to the specific context of those uses, as well as the jurisdiction in which they were made, right? One use might be deemed fair based on the specifics of that particular case, but that doesn't preclude that all uses of AI are fair, or even that a different/higher court might come to a different conclusion. After all, the opinions of a court are just that, opinions. Reasonable people can disagree with the conclusions of a court, and until this reaches the height of the SCOTUS I don't think we can pretend like it's settled law. (And even then, they don't seem particularly bound to any precedent...) It's worth noting, for the sake a more complete discussion, this draft report from the United States Copyright Office from May 2025, that many applications of generative AI are unlikely to be considered fair use when reasonably weighing all of the various factors: We observe, however, that the first and fourth factors can be expected to assume considerable weight in the analysis. Different uses of copyrighted works in AI training will be more transformative than others. And given the volume, speed and sophistication with which AI systems can generate outputs, and the vast number of works that may be used in training, the impact on the markets for copyrighted works could be of unprecedented scale. As generative AI involves a spectrum of uses and impacts, it is not possible to prejudge litigation outcomes. The Office expects that some uses of copyrighted works for generative AI training will qualify as fair use, and some will not. On one end of the spectrum, uses for purposes of noncommercial research or analysis that do not enable portions of the works to be reproduced in the outputs are likely to be fair. On the other end, the copying of expressive works from pirate sources in order to generate unrestricted content that competes in the marketplace, when licensing is reasonably available, is unlikely to qualify as fair use. Many uses, however, will fall somewhere in between. [Emphasis mine.] Going off of basic logic alone... I think if you look at something as blatant as the OpenAI Studio Ghibli filter, it's very clear that the works that were used in training could have been, and almost certainly should have been licensed from Studio Ghibli for the creation of such a feature, especially considering the output images from those for-profit tools could feasibly be used without restriction without even the most basic consent from Studio Ghibli as a whole (or the individual artists who, in Japan, may have some claim of copyright over the individual contributions, iirc). How can anyone reasonably argue that this is a "fair" way to use Studio Ghibli's works? I guess the courts will decide, potentially swayed by the political and corporate interests of our time. But speaking personally, it doesn't pass the smell test to me...