[ghaff]

I'm largely out of this space now but my understanding is that some copyright cases around model training are winding through courts but I haven't seen anything definitive come out. The IP lawyers I know are skeptical but we'll see.

[p_l]

EU AI Act is moving towards genAI output being non-copyrightable and that you'd need to actually prove derivative character from a specific copyrighted work(s) to claim infringement.

AFAIK american law is going towards similar setup.

[ghaff]

IANAL but, yes, with US/UK (i.e. common law regimes) that's something along my understanding as well. Which I generally agree with even if some/many readers here probably do not. Of course, output being copyrightable and copyright infringement on the inputs are two different things.

[p_l]

An important point in copyright infringement is that it generally applies on distribution to other parties.

So the process of acquiring inputs may or may not be an infringement, but with at least proposed EU rules it does not matter to created model itself.

The exception being that output it produces is judged similar to infringement as human output without any "transformative work" credit to model - so similar to how a human could learn a book or painting to memory and close enough reproduction from memory would be infringement, but not generally using the ideas taken from them