• Not at all… In fact, it’s totally batshit insane to determine that the biggest tech companies in the world can freely use anybody’s copyrighted data or intellectual property to train an AI and then claim to have ownership over the output.

      The only way that it makes sense to have AI training be “fair use” is if the output of AI is not able to be copyrighted or commercially used, and that’s not the case here. This decision will only enable a mass, industrialized exploitation of workers, artists and creators.

      • Expanding on the already expansive terms of copyright is not the appropriate way to deal with the externalities of AI. This copyright maximalists approach will hurt small artists, remix culture, drive up business costs for artists who will be dragged into court to prove their workflows didn’t involve any generative steps, and as with every expansion of copyright, primarily help the large already centralized corporate IP holders to further cement their position.

      • Expanding the terms of copyright to 70 years after the life of the author actually didn’t help artists make art. Expanding copyright to cover “training” will result in more costly litigation, make things harder for small artists and creators, and further centralize the corporate IP hoarders that can afford to shoulder the increased costs of doing business. There are inumerable content creators that could and will make use of generative art to make content and they should be allowed to prosper. We need more fair use, not less.

      • That’s not true? There’s nothing stopping content creators from using their own content to create models. In fact, that’s my exact project for some of my visual art.

        Moreover (edit: visual) models can’t effectively replicate the copywrite, so I don’t really see how it would infringe on it.

      • You do realize individuals can train neural networks on their own hardware, right? Generative art and generative text is not something owned by corporations — and in fact what is optimistically becoming apparent is that it is specifically difficult to build moats around a generative model, meaning that it’s especially hard for for corporations to own this technology outright — but those corporations are the only ones that benefit from expanding copyright. Also, I disagree with you also. A trained model is a transformative work, as are the works you can generate with those models. Applying the four factor fair use test comes out heavily on the side of fair use.

        • @Gutless2615 Of course individuals can train models on their own work, but if they train it on other artists work, that too is an unauthorized use.

          Honestly whether AI outputs can be copyrighted is really a separate issue from what I am concerned about… what matters in these cases is where/ how they obtained the inputs on which they trained the models. If a corporation or individual is using other artists works without authorization they are also committing theft, irrespective of any copyright infringement.

          • And while we’re at it let’s throw out mashup artists, collages, remixes and fair use altogether, huh? You’re just incorrect here, fair use exists for a reason, and applying the four factor fair use test to generative art comes out on the side of fair use nine times out of ten. What’s more, what you’re arguing for will only make it harder for small artists who get spurious accusations lobbed their way or automated take downs from bad “ai detector” software and have to drag out in progress files and lawyer money to argue they didn’t use generative tools in their workflow. There are better ways to make sure artists can still get paid - and, spoiler alert: it’s not just the artists that are going to get hit. We need to embrace more creative solutions to the problems of AI than “copyright harder”