> Copyright only protects the actual text. LLMs have weights, not exact copies.
Following this logic a lossily compressed image is completely unprotected by copyright.
> In any case, saying "if I put in some input and get copyrighted output" is tantamount to copyright violations; if I use a generative tool and generate copyrighted info is it the tools fault?
Do you not think this is obviously fact-specific? If I gzip a bunch of (copyrighted) files, then obviously that doesn't somehow make distributing them not infringement. If I now replace the tool = ungzip + input = files combination with tool = (ungzip and files) and input = (selection mechanism over files) do you think that in the second case distributing the tool is not infringement? I don't mean to say that any of these is precisely the same as the LLM case, but I think your argument is clearly overbroad.
> OpenAI at most broke an EULA or some technicality on copyright w.r.t. local ephemeral copies. What's the damage to the NYT though?
One obvious damage claim (if you are skeptical of market harm wrt newspaper/oneline sub sales) is that they were entitled to the FMV of licensing costs of the articles, which is not so hard to value: OpenAI has entered such agreements with AP and others. [0]
Following this logic a lossily compressed image is completely unprotected by copyright.
> In any case, saying "if I put in some input and get copyrighted output" is tantamount to copyright violations; if I use a generative tool and generate copyrighted info is it the tools fault?
Do you not think this is obviously fact-specific? If I gzip a bunch of (copyrighted) files, then obviously that doesn't somehow make distributing them not infringement. If I now replace the tool = ungzip + input = files combination with tool = (ungzip and files) and input = (selection mechanism over files) do you think that in the second case distributing the tool is not infringement? I don't mean to say that any of these is precisely the same as the LLM case, but I think your argument is clearly overbroad.
> OpenAI at most broke an EULA or some technicality on copyright w.r.t. local ephemeral copies. What's the damage to the NYT though?
One obvious damage claim (if you are skeptical of market harm wrt newspaper/oneline sub sales) is that they were entitled to the FMV of licensing costs of the articles, which is not so hard to value: OpenAI has entered such agreements with AP and others. [0]
[0]: https://apnews.com/article/openai-chatgpt-associated-press-a...