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Comment by chii | Hacker News Reader

> How much of that is going back to the copyright holders whose work their service derives value from ?

how much of the earnings of the student of art goes to the textbook authors, paintings and learning materials he used to get to where he is today?

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Derivative works are their own things (when sufficiently derivative). And AIs are not humans - using an algorithm does not automatically remove the copyright. See also "I uploaded a movie to youtube but it's upside down, why did it get taken down".

But that's because the movie is still recognisable. Using an algorithm doesn't automatically remove copyright, but if the algorithm transforms the data to a point where it can't be recognised as the original work, then it isn't breaking copyright.

Those may be fine, yes.

But the AI as a whole is capable of reproducing the original in a recognizable form, and it does so on demand quite easily, because it was trained on them - how is it different than selling a zip file containing millions of copyrighted works, and also a bunch of new stuff?

> how is it different than selling a zip file containing millions of copyrighted works

so you're saying that the digits of pi is violating copyright then?

Copyright law hinges on human element of the actions taking place, not on mathematical technicality. The digits of pi are not creative human expression, nor are they derived from human expression, they're a factual mathematical discovery. They can neither infringe on copyright, nor are they subject to it themselves.

So what differentiates the matrix of numbers in the AI model, vs digits of pi?

I can ask one to produce copyrighted works. The other, not so much. That's a rather weak straw-man.

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