A substitute for what though? Copyright law is only concerned with substituting the work under copyright. That is to say, the consideration is whether the infringing aspects of the secondary work would alter the demand and market for the work being infringed.
In all the talk about AI data laundering there really hasn't been any indication that the AI generated item substitutes for the item it's alleged to infringe on. Substituting for a whole profession and its practitioners doesn't enter into the concerns of copyright law. There might be some argument that it should (to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" as it were), but copyright law to my knowledge hasn't been used to prevent new tech from putting professionals as a whole out of business.
Stock photography seems to be the obvious instance - why bother paying for the labor to make a stock photo, when you can have a generative AI system create the photo for you?
And furthermore, has anyone demonstrated that it is or is not possible to fully, or substantially, recreate any given existing work using the right input prompts?
I’m interested to know more of the legal details, but my understanding of copyright law is such that it preserves the value of intellectual labor.
edit: on a certain level, the cat is already out of the bag, but that doesn’t mean that we should ignore the law, without some indication from lawmakers or government that they intend to adjust said laws
This is precisely my point though, "stock photography" isn't an individual work. Copyright law doesn't apply because you can't infringe on the copyright of "stock photography" as a whole any more than you can infringe on the copyright of "rap" or "rock and roll" or "oil paintings".
Further, just because a new tech can substitute for a class of old tech doesn't (often, barring protectionist laws) mean the old tech gets to impose legal restrictions on new tech. To trot out an obligatory car analogy, the rise of the automobile was not legally hampered by the fact that it substituted for the products of buggy and whip makers. More relevantly, the rise of photography and cameras was not legally hampered by the fact that it substituted for many painters products. The rise of stock photography itself wasn't legally hampered by the fact it substituted for the work of corporate artists. The rise of point and shoot cameras wasn't legally hampered because it substituted for the work of professional photographers.
Lastly if the argument is about that the tech makes it "possible to fully or substantially recreate any given existing work" using deliberate and specific inputs, well we've had plenty of legal precedent on that too. The same arguments were made about Xerox machines, about cassette tapes, about VCRs, about CD-Rs. The copyright holders pretty much lost in every case. At the point you are taking specific and deliberate actions to knowingly infringe on copyright is the point where the technology used is no longer relevant. The right inputs can be used to infringe on the copyright of Star Wars at any typewriter or computer keyboard in the world. The right inputs can be used to infringe on the copyrights of The Beatles at virtually any instrument. It is the act of infringing, not the technology, which is relevant here.
I believe in some companies, the copyright holders won a concession in the form of a tax levied against each CD-R and cassette tape sold to be distributed to the recording industy. One wonders how the authors of those countries felt about not getting a cut of every Xerox machine sold.
> Lastly if the argument is about that the tech makes it "possible to fully or substantially recreate any given existing work" using deliberate and specific inputs, well we've had plenty of legal precedent on that too. The same arguments were made about Xerox machines, about cassette tapes, about VCRs, about CD-Rs. The copyright holders pretty much lost in every case. At the point you are taking specific and deliberate actions to knowingly infringe on copyright is the point where the technology used is no longer relevant. The right inputs can be used to infringe on the copyright of Star Wars at any typewriter or computer keyboard in the world. The right inputs can be used to infringe on the copyrights of The Beatles at virtually any instrument. It is the act of infringing, not the technology, which is relevant here
There is a significant difference here though, a Xerox machine or a VCR itself does not contain a representation of the art they are copying, a DL network does. I am pretty certain the cases around Xerox/VCRs etc would have had a pretty different outcome if you could type a prompt into your machine "print a story about some kids in a wizard college fighting against the comeback of an evil sorcerer" and it would have put out something closely resembling Harry Potter.
> This is precisely my point though, "stock photography" isn't an individual work … It is the act of infringing, not the technology, which is relevant here.
> if the argument is about that the tech makes it "possible to fully or substantially recreate any given existing work" using deliberate and specific inputs, well we've had plenty of legal precedent on that too.
In this case, however, given that we are talking about a computer program, and as such, there are ways to legislate copyright protection (or other protections) without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
As I understand it, that would be skirting the law and philosophical principles behind protectionism for intellectual labor.
If society doesn’t value commodity intellectual labor, then society may need to address the commoditization of intellectual labor, directly, through things like UBI / vocational rehabilitation, etc.
Similar arguments can be made about robots and the commoditization of manual labor.
In all the talk about AI data laundering there really hasn't been any indication that the AI generated item substitutes for the item it's alleged to infringe on. Substituting for a whole profession and its practitioners doesn't enter into the concerns of copyright law. There might be some argument that it should (to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" as it were), but copyright law to my knowledge hasn't been used to prevent new tech from putting professionals as a whole out of business.