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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024

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Which is why, for instance, one of the tests for Fair Use in the US is whether or not the derivative work competes against the original work. In the case of AI art and other generative AI tools, there's a good argument to be made that the tools do compete with the original works. As such, regardless of the technical issues involved, this does reduce the incentives of illustrators by reducing their ability to monetize their illustrations.

Yes, but AI art does not rely on fair use. The argument that the copyright issue is nonsense is that in almost no other circumstances, except where a EULA is enforced, does copyright limit the way someone can use a work. It only means they can't copy it. But the case against AI art would have to extend the concept of copying a work beyond any reasonable point in order for those restrictions to apply. You can't copyright concepts or styles for this reason, only specific works. Obtaining legitimate copies of works and assimilating them for novel synthesis has never implicated copyright before.

The argument that the copyright issue is nonsense is that in almost no other circumstances,

But this is the core of my objection to the objection. LLMs are a novel paradigm and the expectation that previous legal frameworks that were designed for other paradigms should work just as well here without reflection is my objection. It is question begging to answer the question of how copyright out to work around AI to how it worked in non-AI.

That is not to say that it necessary should end up somewhere different. What I am rejecting is the simplistic, predetermined conclusion that it's not different so isn't different. IP protections are not some immutable natural force, and society should have a right to consider refinement in the face of massively disruptive technological innovations. that said...

Realistically nothing can be done anyway. Anything would be impossible to enforce, so I'm not going to lose sleep where you can't do anything anyway.