Apparently, stealing other people’s work to create product for money is now “fair use” as according to OpenAI because they are “innovating” (stealing). Yeah. Move fast and break things, huh?
“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,” wrote OpenAI in the House of Lords submission.
OpenAI claimed that the authors in that lawsuit “misconceive[d] the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial intelligence.”
But AI isn’t all about generating creative works. It’s a store of information that I can query - a bit like searching Google; but understands semantics, and is interactive. It can translate my own text for me - in which case all the creativity comes from me, and I use it just for its knowledge of language. Many people use it to generate boilerplate code, which is pretty generic and wouldn’t usually be subject to copyright.
This is how I use the AI: I learn from it. Honestly I just never got the bug on wanting it to generate creative works I can sell. I guess I’d rather sell my own creative output, you know? It’s more fun than ordering a robot to be creative for me.
I have used it as a collaborator when doing creative work. It’s a great brainstorming buddy, and I use it to generate rough drafts of stuff. Usually I use it while developing roleplaying scenarios for TTRPGs I run for my friends. Generative AI is great for illustrating those scenarios, too.