>Lossily stuffing books into a model through a training process has so far been deemed legal
Not in the EU, UK, or US. "AI" companies were already forced to settle their piracy cases, but often they get a free pass by law enforcement via regulatory capture.
The problem is a book author contracted publisher does not assign legal rights of duplication to a company/individual that buys a legitimate print. It can take over 70 years in some places to become public domain.
The core issue is "AI" firms have so much borrowed cash around, that getting a $1.5B fine for being a pirate is taken as a cost of doing business. The law is simply not equipped to handle this type of hyper-scaling criminal act. =3