Copying Copyrights Starts Early
The act of AI copying copyrighted material happens during the initial stages of AI model training.
And by the time it's trained, the elements of these copyrighted works may stay within the AI model, which can potentially lead to copyright infringement in the future for other projects. Basically, if the machine learns from your stuff, it remembers it and can use it over and over again.
Transformative Use Depends on Results
The whole idea is that these AI models are learning from our copyrighted stuff, but we can't do anything about it because by the time it regurgitates it, it's different.
The report suggests that determining whether the use of copyrighted material in AI training qualifies as "transformative" under fair use principles will depend heavily on how the resulting AI model is ultimately used. Like, if you have an animation character and then it creates one similar, sort of like the Studio Ghibli experiment, then you probably can sue.
But if it's trained on the Ghibli characters but spits out something different, then you probably can't do anything about it. It really has to do with what gets spit out. Some applications of this might be seen as highly transformative, while others could be viewed as merely substituting the original copyrighted work.
Rejection of "Non-Expressive" Use
One of the most interesting points in the report was about how humans learn. Basically, we have to open all the books and see what we retain to learn. But AI just goes in there, copying all the books and taking all the info from them.
The Copyright Office has pushed back against arguments that AI training constitutes a "non-expressive" use or that AI simply mimics human learning processes.
We know that it doesn't. But we have to keep an eye on what the current White House believes and thinks, since they're making changes all the time.
The report highlights fundamental differences in how AI systems process and retain information compared to humans.
It says on page 48, “Humans retain only imperfect impressions of the works they have experienced . . . Generative AI training involves the creation of perfect copies with the ability to analyze works nearly instantaneously.”
Copying Entire Works
This has been what I have been most worried about as a writer. I don't want AI with the ability to copy everything I've done.
AI companies argue fair use, in that if it's on the internet, they have the freedom to use it to learn.
So, let's get into the nuance.
For AI, copying the entirety of a work is functionally necessary for it to be able to produce anything. It cannot create something "transformative" without copying everything. So you have a roadblock, if it can't get to the non-infringement end without infringing, should it be allowed to infringe?
That's one of the big issues facing all of AI right now.
Summing It All Up
We're in an interesting time as creatives. AI is this fun thing that's supposed to be helpful to us, making our dreams come true and streamlining the process, along with all the other benefits they're selling.
But it's also ripping us off left and right, and they have a lot of money behind it, bending laws and pressuring politicians to make sure they can get away with it.
All we can do is stay informed and try to fight this stuff where we can.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
