As far as I know, training generative AI on copyrighted works is fair use, though there may be some legal subtleties around this that need to be worked out. I'm guessing these copyright owners are trying to get some precedent in their favor with this suit.
IMHO AI training should be fair use and I hope this and other suits like it go nowhere. Honestly I don't think the authors have a leg to stand on here. If a generative AI is trained on a bunch of Stephen King novels it doesn't learn to reproduce the works themselves, ie. there is no copy of "Carrie" in the model data which it will spit out pieces of. A good model will learn to write in the style of King; this can be compared to a human author who also reads King's works and wants to write in the same style. Clearly there is no copyright violation in that case, so generative AI should be covered as well.
Obviously, because it's the equivalent of reading the damn book. These guys are upset that an entity read their book.
If I read Stephen King's book, and spit it back out in different pieces with different wording, that is legal. It doesn't make for a good book, but it's legal.
A person reading a book versus inputting parts of the work into a machine are different things and should be treated differently.
I'm not convinced one way or the other, in any case, but it's incorrect to claim these are equivalent. Even if human creativity worked in the way a LLM does (arguable) a person is way different than software.
In my mind, the only crime you can commit with input is piracy, which is I guess what we are talking about. However, if the LLM came across those legitimately, I can't see it as piracy on the output side. Unless the result is literal plagiarism.
As far as I know, training generative AI on copyrighted works is fair use, though there may be some legal subtleties around this that need to be worked out. I'm guessing these copyright owners are trying to get some precedent in their favor with this suit.
IMHO AI training should be fair use and I hope this and other suits like it go nowhere. Honestly I don't think the authors have a leg to stand on here. If a generative AI is trained on a bunch of Stephen King novels it doesn't learn to reproduce the works themselves, ie. there is no copy of "Carrie" in the model data which it will spit out pieces of. A good model will learn to write in the style of King; this can be compared to a human author who also reads King's works and wants to write in the same style. Clearly there is no copyright violation in that case, so generative AI should be covered as well.
Obviously, because it's the equivalent of reading the damn book. These guys are upset that an entity read their book.
If I read Stephen King's book, and spit it back out in different pieces with different wording, that is legal. It doesn't make for a good book, but it's legal.
A person reading a book versus inputting parts of the work into a machine are different things and should be treated differently.
I'm not convinced one way or the other, in any case, but it's incorrect to claim these are equivalent. Even if human creativity worked in the way a LLM does (arguable) a person is way different than software.
In my mind, the only crime you can commit with input is piracy, which is I guess what we are talking about. However, if the LLM came across those legitimately, I can't see it as piracy on the output side. Unless the result is literal plagiarism.