I was listening to this Decoder with Nilay Pattel episode the other day where they discuss the AI copyright lawsuits going on. The thought experiment I keep coming back to is thinking about how it would work legally if these AI models were instead human employees of the company. Say a company employs someone with a photographic memory that is capable of writing back exactly what they read. They have that employee read NYT articles. Then the company contracts out the use of the employee to some third party. The AI company is acting like a temp agency. The third party then requests the employee to write out the NYT article that they have memorized. Where does the legal responsibility lie in that case?
Or as another what if, how about the person is a comic artist that has studied how to draw Mario. Probably a more likely scenario. If they are asked by the third to draw a picture of Mario for them is that breaking copyright law? Or if they're given a very specific request for something that is Mario without using the name Mario is it on them to recognize what they are drawing and refuse the request?
I know AI is this super capable thing that can do whatever its asked 1000x faster than any human could but it's still kind of what's going on. Now given the company making the AI has total control over the AI, it would seem all the responsponsibility falls back on the AI company and not the AI itself.
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