>He sees the widespread practice of training AI on copyrighted data as outrageous, and finds it infuriating that this behavior gets defended with claims that it

>He sees the widespread practice of training AI on copyrighted data as outrageous, and finds it infuriating that this behavior gets defended with claims that it’s democratizing access to information. “Open source doesn’t mean you took a bunch of people’s shit and gave it away for free,” he says. “That's theft.” >Whether the defendant had purchased a signed copy or flagrantly shoplifted a dog-eared paperback wouldn’t matter during arguments over whether The Bedwetter, Too was a derivative rip-off or a transformative parody. This strikes at the heart of why this case is about to be laughed out of court. The argument the plaintiffs are making is that ChatGPT is a "derivative work", i.e. letting people use the software is akin to distributing carbon copies of the book at issue, with at most slight modifications (typical derivative works include translations, screenplay adaptations, etc.). Since ChatGPT obviously cannot literally produce the full text of the book on command, the very strained position they're trying to advance is that short, several-paragraph summaries constitute a derivative work. That is to say, they're arguing that writing, say, a review, or a book report, is an act of copyright infringement tantamount to taking a book, translating it into Japanese, and selling that translation. It's a deeply stupid and wrongheaded argument, and it deserves to die a quick death.