French publishers join the numerous authors suing Meta for copyright infringement. Here is the universal debate (if it even is that): The AI companies now (after obfuscation and claiming otherwise) admit to taking and using without permission or compensation copyrighted works, including those of authors suing them, and now have pivoted to claim one of two things — either (1) their use falls under Fair Use (but given that they aim to profit off of the end product, they hid the fact that they used the material, are using it for generative AI which is not transformative but generative by nature, AND are creating competitor products to those whose copyright they breached, their argument fails almost every pillar of the Fair Use test), or (2) the only way they can compete against other AI companies in global dominance to (achieve the highest profits? Cure cancer first? … ???) they must be granted a “free pass” when it comes to copyright infringement or it’ll cost them too much to continue onward.
The last argument is the one they are leaning hard on and it is mind boggling. What if a bar said it was too costly to pay rent and get liquor licenses so they should just not have to pay them? Or grocery stores said it was too costly to pay for the food they sell in their stores? Oh, or even better, what if every human claimed that paying for any good made it too hard for them to financially survive, so the government should just grant them immunity from having to pay for things? This is what AI companies are saying. And it is a load of (I’m sure ChatGPT can guess what goes here).
PS Gen AI featured image based on “Unite the World” brought to you by missing bodies, why are their eyes all closed, and, yup, AI will unite us against it.
