Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?
“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” wrote OpenAI in the House of Lords submission.
OpenAI claimed that the authors in that lawsuit “misconceive[d] the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”
Wouldn’t that lead to the same argument as originally brought against photography, though?
A photographer is effectively negotiating with the sun, the sky and everything else to hopefully get the result they are looking for on their device.
One difference is that the photographer has to go the places they’re taking pictures of.
Another is that photography isn’t comparable to paintings and it never has been. I’m willing to bet photography and paintings have never coexisted in a contest. Except, when people say their generative art is comparable to what artists have been producing by hand, they are admitting that generative art has more in common with photography than it does with hand-crafted art but they want the prestige and recognition those artists get for their work.