>Clearly, there is no statistical model that can launder IP. Of course. The model isn't making a decision as to what may be used as training data. The humans t

>Clearly, there is no statistical model that can launder IP. Of course. The model isn't making a decision as to what may be used as training data. The humans training it do. >If someone uses Midjourney to produce someone else's IP, that user (not Midjourney) would be in violation of copyright That's like saying that if a user unpacks the dune _full_movie.zip I'm sharing online, it's them who have produced the copyrighted work. And me, the human who put the movie Dune into that zip file, is doing no wrong. Clearly, there is no compression algorithm that can launder IP, right? >However, if other artists are inspired by this style of comic, and it influences their work - that is simply fair use The AI isn't inspired by anything. It's not a sentient being, it's not making decisions, and its behavior isn't regulated by laws because it does not have a behavior of its own. Humans decide what goes into an AI model, and what goes out. And humans who train AI models on art don't get "inspired". They transform it into a derivative work — the AI model. One that has been shown to be awfully close to dune_full_movie.zip if you use the right unpacking tools. But even that isn't necessary. Using work of others in your own work without permission and credit usually goes by less inspiring words: plagiarism, theft, ripping off. Regardless of whether you reproduce the work 1:1, and whether you can be punished by law for it. >tool like Midjourney - that is inspired by the art but doesn't reproduce it Never in the history of humanity has the word inspired meant something that a tool can do. If it's "inspired" (which is something only sentient beings can do), then we should be crying out about human right abuses the way the AI models are trained and treated. If it's just a tool, it's not "inspired". You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either pay your computer minimum wage for working for you, or stop saying that it can get "inspired" by art (whether it's training an AI model or creating a zip file).