This is frankly what humans have always done, learning and taking inspiration from other artists. Now we have made a machine that can do the same thing.
In the case of exact reproductions, we have copyright and IP laws.
You're right, AI generated pictures should not be copyrighted, as is the case today. People should be free to mix and remix pictures via AI as much as they desire.
This is where I imagine things are going to get into trouble because how are you going to determine what is AI and what isn't? Especially when Stable Diffusion is directly classifying artist and cloning their signatures and watermarks. What about things that are started with AI and refined by human?
Exactly. The relevant law is with regard to the use of artwork on the part of the people who feed the index. Artists should have a say on whether their work gets included in a training set, if their works are not public domain.
It feels like a big stretch to consider an algorithm to be 'inspired'.
Where are the bits that correspond to 'inspiration'? Seems like that would answer a lot of big questions in philosophy.
I claim that claiming computer algorithms are inspired is a big stretch.
I claim humans can be inspired.
I don't claim to know how human inspiration happens, or if neurons have anything to do with it. (They may, but I make no claim). Not being able to describe the process by which human inspiration happens doesn't invalidate either of my claims.
If there is a satisfactory non-bit based explanation to how computer algorithms achieve inspiration, I would accept that to. We have the advantage with computers, that their activity is conveniently summarized by their programs which are represented in bits, so expecting an explanation in that form I think is reasonable.
The defense if the claim of human inspiration is (1) we have that word for the concept (2) we have thousands of years of thought, philosophy and literature giving support and definition to the concept.
These models are not learning or being inspired in the same sense humans are. The laws tgat apply to humans should not be applied to them.