Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI::The AI community needs to take copyright lawsuits seriously.
Why The New York Times might win its copyright lawsuit against OpenAI::The AI community needs to take copyright lawsuits seriously.
“though it is true I initially didn’t […]”
That said, I read it again, I suppose I have been uncharitable. You make some good points, and perpetual ironclad intellectual property hoarded by massive corporations isn’t something my current views adequately address.
But just because I don’t have an answer to that doesn’t mean I have to agree with AI companies scraping every last corner of the internet for their datasets.
You say you disagree with property owners always receiving compensation for their work being used.
To some extent I agree with your disagreement.
Even so I cannot view AI companies taking the work of whomever they please without compensation as morally justifiable. Especially if those artists are small and have no way to defend themselves.
IP hoarders are a separate issue.
You don’t have to agree. It’s a value judgement. What is important to you? There is no correct answer.
My conviction is that property is mainly a means to an end. That end is human well-being, but if you pressed me on what exactly that means, I’d start flailing.
You can believe that intellectual property is fundamentally important. Mind that what you think of as intellectual property is probably broader/different from copyright in law. You can say that enforcing this kind of property right is an end in itself, that justifies the terrible consequences. Small artists would get shafted one way or the other.
And ideally they wouldn’t. Letting AI companies take as they please is one part of that, therefore it should be stopped.
Injustice is such a frustrating thing. But when the opposing party has trillions of dollars and you draw in your free time there’s literally nothing you can do. So much for equality.
That’s a result of your values. Your views on property are incompatible with equality.
You made the assumption that I do not care if my writings are used for AI training but I actually do. I like it. I like knowing that I helped other people. I feel the same way about taxes, but this is better since it does not cost me anything.
This may be too long but here’s a quick overview of what your views on property mean for small artists.
Per Google, Getty Images’ archive is the largest privately-owned photographic archive in the world, containing over 130 million images dating back to the beginning of photography and beyond. Unsurprisingly, Getty is suing over AI.
How many images does your small artist own? A few dozen? A few hundred?
So when your small artist gets a few dollars, Getty gets many millions. Of course, they won’t be getting the same per image. Getty can pay lawyers millions to negotiate and there will still be many millions left in profit. Your small artist can’t do that. Even the negotiation would cost more than their images are worth. They can only upload to their images to Adobe or Shutterstock and accept whatever they are given.
Even the most selfless non-profit would have to take a big chunk just to handle the cost of running the website, dealing with copyright infringement, bad quality images, “naughty” images, track payment information, handle the money,… But why should they be selfless? After all, the website is basically their property.
Now we reach the point where it gets bad.
Remember that the rent for these images does not create anything of value. No one is paid to make anything new. Money is transferred to property owners, because they own property. It ends up mainly with rich people, because they own so much property. Much of the money for “small artists” is wasted on bureaucracy. A good chunk also ends up with rich people, because middle men are unavoidable.
Since we are mainly transferring and not creating wealth, it must come from somewhere. It comes from subscription fees for AI services. It can’t come from anywhere else, right?
For example, a subscription for Photoshop has to include these fees. What Photoshop calls generative fill is genAI.
Now riddle me this: Who pays subscriptions for Photoshop?