[Analemma_]

Whether it’s legal slash fair use to train on copyrighted material is only one of the questions currently being asked though. There’s a separate issue at play where these companies are pirating the material for the training process.

By comparison, someone here brought up that it might be transformative fair use to write a play heavily based on Blood Meridian, but you still need to buy a copy of the book. It would still be infringement to pirate the e-book for your writing process, even if the end result was legal.

[codedokode]

If they would buy material at a large scale, the seller might require them to sign a contract that requires royalty if the material is used for training an AI. So buying legally is a way to put yourself into a trap.

[brookst]

They can buy individual works like anyone else.

Or they can negotiate a deal at scale with whatever price / restrictions make sense to both parties.

I don’t see a way they could be “trapped”. Worst case they pay retail price.

[shadowgovt]

What is the precedent on that kind of agreement?

The only thing I've been able to find is the note that since copyright is federal law, state contract law actually can't supersede it, to wit: if you try to put a clause in the contract that says the contract is void if I use your work to make transformative fair-use works (or I owe you a fee), that clause is functionally unenforceable (for the same reason that I don't owe you a fee if I make transformative fair-use works of your creations in general).