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> In this case I don't think it is terribly pertinent whether or not the content was AI generated. The issue here is someone is trying to capitalize on the legacy of George Carlin. Admitting that it is human-written does not change that aspect.

> It is hard to determine how much of the article text ...is a quote from the lawsuit. It is certainly not clear in a moral or legal sense whether training constitutes making an unauthorized copy. That is the big issue to be decided. Having an opinion and declaring it does not make it true. People are doing that on both sides already.

The article is paraphrasing one of the three claims asserted in the complaint filed by George Carlin's estate (https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/24377438-govuscour...):

> Without authorization from Plaintiffs, or any right under law, Defendants have unlawfully used Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works for building and training a dataset for purposes of generating an output intended to mimic Plaintiffs’ copyrighted work (i.e., Carlin’s stand-up comedy).

So regardless of whether the court will agree with this (I don't think the details of how training of AI models works in relation to copyright law have been settled in case law yet), it is in fact highly pertinent to the lawsuit because there will be no copyright claim if an AI was not trained on Carlin's work.

That would still leave the two other claims though (violation of rights of publicity and deprivation of rights of publicity).

> "It is certainly not clear in a moral or legal sense whether training constitutes making an unauthorized copy."

Another complicating factor here is to what extent the mainstream definition of "training" even applies to things like LLMs.

The mismatch between what "training" typically means vs. what it means very specifically in a ML context is the source of many problems in this discussion.

We have for example heard many arguments that a human listening to every Beatles album, and then writing a new song based heavily in the style of the Beatles, is very clearly legal. But it's not clear that the ML model "learns" or "trains" in any way that is analogous to the human mind.

Another problem that I think we're not really contending with is to what extent LLMs generalize and to what extent they memorize. The more memorization that occurs the more compelling the argument will be that this is to some extent copyright-violating.

It certainly doesn't help the generalization argument that many LLMs can be compelled fairly easily to reproduce parts of their training data verbatim.

> The issue here is someone is trying to capitalize on the legacy of George Carlin.

Personally, if someone creates an entertaining video that successfully captures the spirit of George Carlin, or any deceased speaker or artist, that sounds awesome. I'm all for it. I'd also love to have another Led Zeppelin album.

How would you suggest someone creates this ethically?

That was the whole gimmick here, though. They pitched it as "AI-generated George Carlin". They used his likeness for the thumbnail. They faked his voice.

Nothing is stopping you from writing a novel in the style of Harry Potter, but if you put "Harry Potter" in the title and use the same typeface, you're probably gonna get a call from a lawyer, because you're clearly trying to capitalize on existing IP instead of letting your work stand on its own merits. Is that wrong?

There's plenty of people bashing the concept of intellectual property here because Disney or whatever, but most artists aren't fat cats, and copyright protects their livelihoods without forcing them to rely on state sponsorship or private patronage - both of which are pretty problematic for artistic expression.

> Is that wrong?

Honestly I don't think so. This is one of the things that's always bothered me about copyright, that for the entire history of humanity storytelling has been a place where practitioners build on one another and add their own takes and ideas. Stories are shared and become part of people's cultural and personal identities and I don't think they should be able to be owned to the degree they are today. Copying your Phantom Menace DVD I think is totally fine to be illegal but making your own take on it, making art based on it, or telling other stories the same universe I think should be allowed.

I would require compulsory licensing and percentage fee remittance for "covers" or "remixes" of someone else's work. Like if you remade Phantom Menace, made Muppets Phantom Menace or novelized it. But what's called fanfic today should be able to be published above board.

Sure, but you're not giving enough attention to the fact that this is all happening against the backdrop of capitalism. It's really NICE when stories can be just freely shared and remixed and built from, and we're all richer for that, culturally, sure.

But artists and authors and comedians have to earn a living! If we want their output to be free, we can't expect them to also have to pay all for their inputs and, you know, keep making art!

If we judge art to have value under capitalism, there NEEDS to be a way of protecting that value for those who create it. Alternatively, we could explore alternatives to this whole capitalism thing, but you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

Right, which is why I'm saying that artists should retain exclusive control of the actual works that they produce and receive mandated royalties from anything that "covers" it (i.e. is substantively the same). Movie adaptations would fall under the category of covers.

Where I think it gets murky is when you try to claim ownership over the characters and universe. Because that prevents anyone who's inspired from sharing and selling their work. They either have to come up with their entirely unique OC or do what a lot of authors do which is pick a universe and cast that's in the public domain which is why we get so many greek god adaptations, Camelot, vampires, zombies. The creativity that would flourish if "Harry Potter" could be used with the freedom that people use Count Dracula would be incredible.

You're correct in this particular case, but I want to point out that copyright only protects fat-cat artists. OpenAI and StabilityAI thought training on web text and images was OK, but restricted themselves to public domain & licensable audio, because the music industry is perfectly willing to bleed millions keeping you from kidnapping what they've rightfully stolen. Visual artists and writers generally own their own works, unlike musicians, which means they're on the hook for individual enforcement to the tune of 5-6 figures per lawsuit. There's no mechanism that would allow for someone - even the government - to just step in and enforce copyright over the entire training set.

If, say, someone started writing Ruffle PRs with ChatGPT and filing them as made by "AI kmeisthax", that'd probably be a trademark or publicity rights violation. I'd be furious - but I wouldn't be able to stop them. Not without paying a potentially life-ruining amount of money to pursue a marginal claim in court against some anonymous J.Doe.

Likewise, there's shittons of people who steal art and writing, reselling it on T-shirt stores and Kindle without much in the way of legal recourse. Those are often legitimately lost sales[0], too! And yet, despite having some of the strictest copyright laws in history, artists don't really have the means to shut them down beyond "dox yourself with a DMCA notice". They are starving despite copyright.

Private property is a thing that makes it harder to overconsume scarce resources. It doesn't protect against exploitation. What you want is collective bargaining and enforcement - i.e. a law specifically prohibiting misleading use of AI with rights of action for all parties.

[0] As opposed to, say, arguing that a BitTorrent download is a lost sale

> How would you suggest someone creates this ethically?

Step 1: Ask for permission.

Example: the hologram of 2pac at Coachella 2012. It was pitched to the rapper's estate, they reviewed the proposal and approved.

Ask permission from whom? George Carlin has been dead for 15 years.

From the copyright inheritors? Personally, not a fan of copyright inheritance, so I'll pass, unless I'm legally obligated. But I think the law says parody is fair use, does it not? I guess we'll find out with this lawsuit.

> Ask permission from whom?

his estate.

> Personally, not a fan of copyright inheritance, so I'll pass, unless I'm legally obligated

you are.

> But I think the law says parody is fair use, does it not?

this case isn't about parody. it's about using someone's likeness without permission.