[unstablediffusi]

their consent was not required. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use

petabytes of training data are transformed into mere gigabytes of model weights. no existing copyright laws are violated. until new laws declare that permission is required, this is a non-argument.

>If this AI worked without training, no one would say anything.

adobe firefly was trained on licensed content, and rest assured, the anti-AI zealots don't give it a pass.

the copyright is just one of the many angles they use to decry the thing that threatens their jobs.

[yallpendantools]

There is no final word on the matter yet and there are counterpoints to the "Transformative use" argument.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/judge-meta-case-wei...

> "You have companies using copyright-protected material to create a product that is capable of producing an infinite number of competing products," Chhabria told Meta's attorneys. "You are dramatically changing, you might even say obliterating, the market for that person's work, and you're saying that you don't even have to pay a license to that person."

> "I just don't understand how that can be fair use," Chhabria said.

https://ipwatchdog.com/2025/05/12/copyright-office-weighs-ai...

> Stylistic imitation even without substantial similarity would likely be implicated under such a [market-dilution] theory, which could be considered as a market effect under factor four that diminishes the value of the original work used to train the model.

[unstablediffusi]

that's one sympathetic judge's opinion vs written law.

I'm not American, but it's clear to me that it will be the supreme court that ultimately decides whether licensing is necessary or not. the parties involved - the megacorps with infinite money and the litigious publishers - won't settle for less.

and given that the ruling in favor of the publishers would all but kill the American AI efforts (good luck licensing millions of works needed to train a coherent model) and greatly benefit China (who doesn't give a fuck about IP), I find it highly likely that it will not happen.