In this instance the training data was New Yorker cartoons signed by Brendan Loper, and the material presented to the end user is New Yorker-style cartoons signed by Brendan Loper.
To me that seems a exceedingly broad definition of fair use.
To me that seems a exceedingly broad definition of fair use.
Perhaps we need to create a new form of intellectual property to protect innovations in style. But that’s not copyright, which protects existing works from unauthorized reproduction. It seems like it would be very difficult to adjudicate though; how do you assess whether a style is truly unique to an author or artist?
This is exactly the sort of anthropomorphism I'm talking about.
Yes, human artists reproduce styles all the time, but implying this equivalence between what a human does when they recreate a style, and what an AI model has done when its output is suspiciously similar to a single artist's "contributions" to the training set is reductive since the mechanism is obviously completely different. It doesn't say anything about whether one ought to be allowed, just because the other is, but the assumption that it should is doing the legwork for those who benefit from AI as a copyright washing machine.
My point is not that the process is the same. That’s not relevant to the law. What’s relevant is whether or not the material is a reproduction that substantially infringes upon the original.
I’m also not making an ought argument. If you want to change the law, write your congressman. What I’m arguing is that existing legal doctrine on copyright law very clearly does not protect mere ideas or styles.
> What I’m arguing is that existing legal doctrine on copyright law very clearly does not protect mere ideas or styles.
Like it or not, it is anthropomorphizing to claim that an algorithm can have ideas or use styles, rather than just saying that the apparent "ideas" and "styles" in its output are a mathematical derivation of the human ideas and styles in the copyrighted material in its training set.