Struggling to sort out my thoughts on this one.

I’m not really sure comparing AI to a human artist learning and being inspired by others quite fits. At least in the context of a commercial AI (one that a company charges others to use). It feels scummy for a company (for profit entity) to steal training data from others without consent, and then turn around and charge people for the product they built on that stolen content.

That said, existing copyright law allows for ‘fair use’, which includes educational purposes. In that light, AI companies could be seen as a sort of AI school program. But the icky part to me, is that AI is not a person. It can’t choose to leave the school. That school can then profit off that student forever and ever.

I feel like the fair use argument for education applies to humans, not AI (at least not till they actually gain sapience). AI are machines that can be leveraged and exploited by the few and powerful, and that power should come without us subsidizing their development.

Though honestly it’s sort of a moot point, because it’s already done and we’re very unlikely to ever properly charge them now. And now that they have the start, they have a leg up on everyone else. So the morality of how it was built no longer really matters, unless we want to argue AI should all be open source or public domain.