I very much enjoy ChatGPT and I'm excited to see where that technology goes, but lawsuits like this feel so shaky to me. OpenAI used publicly available data to train their AI model. If I wanted to get better at writing, and I went out and read a ton of posted text and articles to learn, would I need to go ask permission from each person who posted that information? What if I used what I learn to make a style similar to how a famous journalist writes, then got a job and made money from the knowledge I gained?

The thing that makes these types of lawsuits have a hard time succeeding is proving that they "Stole" data and used it directly. But my understanding of learning models in language and art is that they learn from it more so then use the material directly. I got access to midjourney last year August, and my first thought was, better enjoy this before it gets sued into uselessness. The problem is, people can sue these companies, but this genie can't be put back into the bottle. Even if OpenAI get hobbled in what they can do, other companies in other countries will do the same and these law suits will stop nothing.

We're going to see this technology mature and get baked into literally every aspect of life.

This is interesting. Now wealthy folks can defend their copying of data for personal gain while the concept of content piracy is a criminal offense for the everyday joe, complete with steep fines and sometimes vacations to clubfed.

If I learned to read from Dr. Seuss books, does that mean that everything I write owes a copyright tariff to the Geisel estate?

if you release data into the public domain (aka, if it's indexable by a search engine) then copying that data isnt stealing - it cant be, the data was already public in the first place.

this is just some lawyer trying to make a name for themselves

So anyone who creates something remotely similar to something online is plagiarizing, got it.

Folks, that’s how we all do things - we read stuff, we observe conversations, we look at art, we listen to music, and what we create is a synthesis of our experiences.

Yes, it is possible for AI to plagiarize, but that needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis, just as it is for humans.

I don't think something is stolen if it's analyzed and used for something new. It never matters if you came up with an idea, only what you do with that idea.

About the only two major places on the Internet that explicitly give permission to reuse their users' content are Wikipedia and Stack Overflow. Add the public domain texts in Project Gutenberg and that's about it, the rest of the Social Media requires consent from the user to be reused elsewhere. This is the crux of the problem, CEOs just taking data indiscriminately from the Internet just because it's indexable by Google.

So anyone who creates something remotely similar to something online is plagiarizing, got it.

Folks, that’s how we all do things - we read stuff, we observe conversations, we look at art, we listen to music, and what we create is a synthesis of our experiences.

Yes, it is possible for AI to plagiarize, but that needs to be evaluated on a case by case basis, just as it is for humans.