Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) company Anthropic has claimed to a US court that using copyrighted content in large language model (LLM) training data counts as “fair use”, however.
Under US law, “fair use” permits the limited use of copyrighted material without permission, for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research.
In October 2023, a host of music publishers including Concord, Universal Music Group and ABKCO initiated legal action against the Amazon- and Google-backed generative AI firm Anthropic, demanding potentially millions in damages for the allegedly “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”.
If an artist falls in love with drawing and learns to draw from Jack Kirby’s work and at the beginning even imitates his style, does he owe Jack Kirby royalties for every drawing he does as he ‘learned’ on Jack’s copyrighted art?
I think in that case, no. ‘Style’ is one thing, directly using someone’s art in your own work is something else entirely. However, we’re talking about a person here, not a program developed by a company for the express purpose of making as much money as possible in the shortest amount of time. Until AI can truly demonstrate that it is truly thinking and not simply executing commands given, I don’t think the lines are blurred nearly enough to suggest that someone learning to paint and an AI trained on hundreds of thousands of pieces of art for the purpose of making money for the company that built it are remotely the same.