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Comment by jncfhnb | Hacker News Reader

“The cat saw the dog”

“Bathed in the soft hues of twilight, the sleek feline, with its fur a tapestry of midnight shades, beheld an approaching canine companion. A symphony of amber streetlights cast gentle poles of warmth upon the cobblestone path, as the cat’s entered eyes, glinting with subtle mischief, looked into the form of the oncoming dog- a creature of boundless enthusiasm and a coat adorned with a kaleidoscope of earth tones”

Since an AI has produced the latter from the former, there is no meaningful transformation.

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> Since an AI has produced the latter from the former, there is no meaningful transformation.

In law, in the eyes of those that want AI to "win", or in the eyes of those who want AI to "lose"? For all three can be different. (Now I'm remembering a Babylon 5 quote: "Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.")

Don’t care! The problem at hand is people trying to argue that laws should be written in ways that are entirely unenforceable or have enormous gaping loopholes that undermine their stated goals.

Lots of laws look like that to me.

I don't much like that laws seem so messy either, but that just doesn't seem like much of a reason to think it won't shake out like that.

The law may well start on the basis of what people feel, and work outwards from there to things that might, or might not, be actually enforceable. And the headline summary of that law may or may not have much in common with the details, which is why e.g. the USA PATRIOT Act has that name.

Ehh maybe. But this feels far more egregious to me than typical.

yes, exactly.

Likewise "write a novel in the style of Terry Pratchett"

Ok, now I, as a human, adjust a word. It is now my creative work.

Well it isn't is it? Any more than adjusting a word from an actual Terry Pratchett novel.

It is substantially different from changing a word in a terry Pratchett novel. Terry Prachett wrote none of that text. It would be absolute bonkers for Terry to claim ownership of text he didn’t write. Even if we pretend for a minute that the bot was asked to write in the style of Terry specifically.

But by prompting for 'in the style of' effectively you are mechanically rearranging everything he wrote without adding anything yourself. So not so different really, and I can see how lawyers for the plaintiff may make a convincing argument along those lines.

It’s a terrible argument and a terrible loop hole. It’s perfectly legal to hire someone to write in the copied style of Terry.

So even if your desired system were implemented to a T, you could hire someone to write a dozen or so examples of Terry writing. Probably just 30 or so pages of highly styled copied text, and then train your bot on this corpus to make “Not Terry” content. Boom. $100 on gig author and then for all practical purposes the Terry style is legally open source. Terry doesn’t even get the $100!

They've specifically proposed that there be a legal distinction drawn between "done by a human" and "done by an automated process."

Saying "a-HA! But my automated process can produce something that looks much like what your human would!" does not negate that; it merely makes it hard to tell the difference at a glance—which we already know to be the case.

That doesn’t follow the thread of conversation here at all.

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