A complementary idea is that just because gen ai could be used to violate copyright, as in if some of the example outputs here turn out to be legal violations,

A complementary idea is that just because gen ai could be used to violate copyright, as in if some of the example outputs here turn out to be legal violations, it's existence doesn't. Using song lyrics or website content to learn about the structure of grammar or the relationships between words has nothing to do with copyright, and for most LLM end uses, that's what's going on. The fact that it incidentally knows about copyrighted works means that at worst, a "bad actor" could use it to make a copyright violating work, just like I could release a bootleg copy of myself singing whatever pop song I've memorized. But these are hypothetical, it only makes sense to worry about violating outputs when they are actually produced. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36807408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36807408 for a related discussion