Technology

Capitalism is precisely the problem, because if the end product were never sold nor used in any commercial capacity, the case for "fair use" would be almost impossible to challenge. They're betting on judges siding with them in extending a very specific interpretation of fair use that has been successfully applied to digital copying of content for archival and distribution as in e.g. Google Books or the Internet Archive, which is also not air-tight, just precedent.

Even fair uses of media may not respect the dignity of the creators of works used to create "media synthesizers". In other words, even if a computer science grad student does a bunch of scraping for their machine learning dissertation, unless they ask and get permission from the creators, their research isn't upholding the principle of data dignity, which current law doesn't address at all, but is obviously the real issue upsetting people about "Generative AI".

Nobody stops you to be an artist. You can still have a job that is still alive today, AND be an artist in your own free time. As I mentioned, I was a very successful collage artist (NYTimes pick for best book cover, lots of commissions, lots of print sales etc). I decided to leave the surrealness of collage behind because I enjoyed children's illustrations more. Guess what, I don't make a dime with my illustrations. I've spent $15k on art supplies in 5 years and I made $1k back. But that doesn't stop me from painting nearly EVERY DAY. I share my work online, and whoever likes it, likes it. I don't expect sales anymore. Be it because it's not a popular look, or because of AI. It doesn't matter to me, I still paint daily.

AI generated content cannot be copyrighted because it is not the product of creativity, but the product of generative computing.

This article is about a lawsuit that sounds in unjust enrichment, not copyright. Unjust enrichment is an equitable claim, not a legal claim, and it's based on a situation in which one party is enriched at the expense of another, unjustly. If an AI company is taking content without permission, using it to train its model, and then profiting off its model without having paid or secured any license from the original artists, that seems pretty unjust to me.

If you're at all interested in how the law is going to shake out on this stuff, this is a case to follow.

If society benefits from the democratization of art/books/etc then it's not a loss, it's a win for everyone. There were many jobs in the past that were lost because technology made them obsolete. Being a commissioned artist is one of these professions. However, there IS still going to be a SMALL niche for human-made original artworks (not made on ipads). But that'd be a niche. And no one stopping anyone from doing art, be it a profession or not. That's the beauty of art. If you were to be a plumber, and robots took your job, you'd have trouble to do it as a hobby, since it would require a lot of sinks and pipes to play around, and no one would care. But with art, you can do it on the cheap, and people STILL like your stuff, EVEN if they won't buy it anymore.

Not an issue either, my copied works were fully copyrighted. I wanted them to be cc-by, but I never really relicenced them, too much work for 1500 works.

Many of those those reaction videos on YouTube are actually infringing on copyright. Just that the videos they're reacting to aren't made by people with deep enough pockets to sue them so they get away with it.

I think they are considered derivative, and are not protected. Not that he wasn't creative, just that his work wasn't so creative to be independently copyrightable. I'm a little rusty on my IP law.