[chii]

> is the company running the model themselves not already publishing all of that work and profiting from it?

no, because the model is transformative enough that it cannot be said to be a derivative works of the training set.

The model is in essence a form of distilled information, extracted from the training set. Information cannot be copyrighted - only expressions can.

Therefore, a model producer should have the right to use any pre-existing work, in the same way a person can, to study and internally memorize and extract information.

The reproduction of any of the training set data constitutes a copyright violation, but this is not done by the owner of the model, but by an end user of the model.

[dumpsterdiver]

My point is that if a court finds that a generated image is indeed similar enough to constitute an infringement when a subscriber of for instance MidJourney attempts to publish it, has that work not already been "published" to the subscriber? And has MidJourney not profited by gaining a subscriber based on the work of others?