> I don't see how any corporation should be able to consume someone's copyrighted work without their permission and make something of it.
I'm not quite sure where I stand yet on this issue. I wonder, though, if an individual artist studies another long-dead artist's work, practices that style of painting/drawing/whatever, and then produces something in that same vein that is clearly inspired by the artist...is there a copyright issue? My instinct would be to answer 'no' as this is what art and inspiration has always been about. No one had to pay to look at Da Vinci's work or study a Renoir - the art was publicly available.
Now, with OpenAI, the capacity to 'study' an artist and produce something in their style is available to all. If the work is publicly available, is a machine studying/learning from it any different to an art student in a museum? And if OpenAI generates an image in the style of Da Vinci, should it be paying someone for doing so?
Again, my instinct is 'no'. I can understand why an artist working today might see things very differently but unless the source material was locked up or otherwise not available for people to see, study and learn from, I am not yet convinced there is a big difference between thousands of humans studying and imitating a master artist and a machine studying and imitating a master artist.