There is quite a bit of precedent for "making copies of digital things is copyright infringement". Look at lawsuits from the Napster era. [1] What makes the us

There is quite a bit of precedent for "making copies of digital things is copyright infringement". Look at lawsuits from the Napster era. [1] What makes the use improper? Licenses. Terms of service. Mostly licenses though. For example, all the images on Flickr that were uploaded under Creative Commons licenses (e.g. non-commercial) have now been used in a commercial capacity by a company to create and sell a product. Similarly, code is on Github with specific licenses with specific terms. Copilot is a derivative work of that code, the license terms of that code (e.g. GPL, non-commercial) should extend to the new function that was derived from it. The reason I mention competition with the original is the fair use test (USA). When courts decide whether something is fair use they consider a few aspects. Two important ones are whether it is commercial, and whether it is a substitute for the original. When art models output something in the style of a living artist, it is essentially a direct substitute for that person. Sure, I can make a shirt with Spider Man on it and give it to my brother, but if a company were to use what I made or I tried to sell it, I would expect a cease and desist from Disney. Training the model may very well be a copyright issue. The images have been copied, they are being used. Whether that falls under fair use will likely be determined on a case by case basis in court. I do not believe closed commercial models like Copilot or Dall-e will pass a fair use test. There is a lot of money involved here though, so we will need to wait for years before we have answers. 1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/11/minnesota-woman-songs-illegally-downloaded https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/sep/11/minnesota...