But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation? It's definitely a violation if the model is overfitted to the extent that you can, perhaps lossily, extract the original images.
> But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation?
Is selling colored pencils that can draw images of Mickey a copyright violation?
The way I see it, the tool can't ever be at fault for its use, unless its sole use (or something close enough to its sole use) is to infringe in copyright.
Besides, the safeguarding of copyright isn't the single variable we as a society should be solving for. General global productivity is way more valuable than guaranteeing Disney's bottom line.
> The way I see it, the tool can't ever be at fault for its use, unless its sole use (or something close enough to its sole use) is to infringe in copyright.
Even then, you could look at a tape recorder or a photocopier and one of their primary uses is to make a copy of a copyrighted work.
The question isn't "can it be used for" but rather "does it have valid non-infringing use" and "when it does infringe, is it the person who uses the tool or the tool that is at fault?"
> But is publishing a model which can generate images of Mickey a copyright violation?
I don't think that courts have ruled on that specifically (yet), but I seriously doubt that it would be. Taking the image of Mickey and distributing it would certainly be, though.
A photocopier is extremely different because the user is providing the copyrighted material. In the AI case, it is much more like writing a Google search for the copyrighted material. If I ask an artist to draw a cartoon of Mickey Mouse in violation of copyright, the artist is in violation of copyright if they produce said drawing and give it to me. Are we to give special rights to AI that human artists don't enjoy?
When I've heard people talking about using copyright to defend against AI, they've always talked about it in the sense that their works being used to train the AI is where the copyright violation takes place.
That stance is clearly not supported by copyright law.
If, however, we're talking about copyright violations applying to the distribution of works generated by AI, that's an entirely different conversation. It's still not really clear-cut, but there are ways that could be in violation of copyright law.
It isn't the case that AI is being treated differently, though. The issues would be the same if a human were doing all of this stuff.
