Can you imagine Uber or open AI trying to get all the proper rules out the gate? It would either be a non starter or extremely expensive. And at the end of the day it’d be a watered down version of what’s possible. The power is all in the established hands. Perhaps the AI is trained on newspapers but not movies.
By doing what they did, they showed what’s possible and how excited users are. Now there’s a balance of power and both sides can come to a compromise.
Additionally, if you ask for permission people have to imagine how things will be and for something innovative that’s hard. Can you imagine open AI explaining to the New York Times what chat gpt was going to be, before it was released? At best they’d have some kind of approximation or worst just not understand and seek to kill it.
I would’ve done the same thing as open AI because it’s the most valuable thing, there’s enough legal grey area to not be flagrantly in the wrong, and things will get sorted later. Same thing with Uber - technically it was “ride sharing”, someone is going from point a to b and you as passenger just happen to join them, but obviously quickly expanded beyond that