Those claiming AI training on copyrighted works is “theft” misunderstand key aspects of copyright law and AI technology. Copyright protects specific expressions of ideas, not the ideas themselves. When AI systems ingest copyrighted works, they’re extracting general patterns and concepts - the “Bob Dylan-ness” or “Hemingway-ness” - not copying specific text or images.
This process is akin to how humans learn by reading widely and absorbing styles and techniques, rather than memorizing and reproducing exact passages. The AI discards the original text, keeping only abstract representations in “vector space”. When generating new content, the AI isn’t recreating copyrighted works, but producing new expressions inspired by the concepts it’s learned.
This is fundamentally different from copying a book or song. It’s more like the long-standing artistic tradition of being influenced by others’ work. The law has always recognized that ideas themselves can’t be owned - only particular expressions of them.
Moreover, there’s precedent for this kind of use being considered “transformative” and thus fair use. The Google Books project, which scanned millions of books to create a searchable index, was ruled legal despite protests from authors and publishers. AI training is arguably even more transformative.
While it’s understandable that creators feel uneasy about this new technology, labeling it “theft” is both legally and technically inaccurate. We may need new ways to support and compensate creators in the AI age, but that doesn’t make the current use of copyrighted works for AI training illegal or unethical.
For those interested, this argument is nicely laid out by Damien Riehl in FLOSS Weekly episode 744. https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/744
Is the pirate valued at $100,000,000,000? Will the pirate ever make enough of a dent to be considered a rounding error in a $100bn valuation? Is the pirate even attempting to turn a profit?
If the training data was for personal consumption, knock yourself out. When you try to say you’re worth billions but can’t afford to pay for the material? Fuck all the way off. I’m sure fucknuts at the top of this is gonna get a fat fucking pay day, so scrape a few fucking zeros off their quartly bonus and pay the people actually making the fucking content you are ABSOLUTELY going to turn around and try to make a profit off of.
Don’t forget that the pirates usually don’t say “art should have been just a weekend hobby, not a profession”.
I don’t see how this addresses my question. Just because someone is causing bigger harm it doesn’t justify causing a little harm. Stealing a lollipop is less bad than stealing a car but it’s still both stealing. AI companies can afford paying for the material just like online pirate can afford paying for the movie.
Because the small thief in this example is not making money from the theft
No, but they’re saving money which is effectively the same thing. There’s no practical difference between earning 50 bucks and getting a 50 buck discount.
That’s not quite true, though, is it?
$50 earned is yours to spend on anything. A $50 discount is offered by a vendor to entice you to spend enough of your money on them to make the discount worthwhile.
Pirates don’t pirate because they’re trying to save money on something they would have bought otherwise… typically they pirate because the amount they consume would bankrupt them if they purchased it through legitimate means, so they would never have been a paying customer in the first place.
So, if they wouldn’t have bought it anyway, and they’re not reselling it, did they really harm the vendor? Whether they pirated it or not, it wouldn’t affect the vendor either way.
That’s not really the same thing, in my opinion.
If you were able to pay for everything handily but pirated anyway, or if you resold pirated content, then yeah you have something similar to theft going on. But that’s not really the norm; those people are doing something bad irrespective of the piracy itself, aren’t they?