Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. The courts will decide.
This offhandedly seems to dismiss the cost of achieving legal clarity for using a book - a cost that will far eclipse the cost of the book itself.
In that light, it seems like an underweighted statement.
I'd like to see them try to argue Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc. applies to their corpus.
But the first one is a human using things. Its big guy vs little guy.
The prescident is there, google already "reads" every page in the internet and injests it into its systems and has for decades and has survived lawsuits to do so.
Peak was using MAI operating system directly by live booting it without their permission.
Antivirus and security companies don't need licenses to scan copyrighted materials to look for threats or vulnerabilities.
AI similarly is not executing, deploying, reselling or redistributing the copyrighted material. It's using the data to build a model. Security software distills the down data more, but it's still the same principle.