[rswail]

Because the authors of the original content deserve recompense for their work.

That's what the whole copyright and patent regimes are designed to achieve.

It's to encourage the creation of knowledge.

US Constitution, Article I, section 8:

    To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by
    securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the
    exclusive Right to their respective Writings 
    and Discoveries;

[carlob]

Right, it says exclusive rights, which does not translate to "we siphon everything and you get a tiny percentage of our profits", it means I can choose to say no to all of this. To me the matter of compensation and that of authorship rights are mostly orthogonal.

[rswail]

Agreed, but the right to compensation is derived from the right of licensing something you author.

The courts have ruled that something machine generated does not have a human author, so therefore it is not subject to copyright, in the US.

So if enough authors agreed and sued the AI companies to remove their copyrighted elements from the AI training, then that would be a reasonable solution as well.

However, any lawsuit is highly likely to result in some sort of compensation paid if decided in favor of the authors.