Generative AI’s end-run around copyright won’t be resolved by the courts

Output similarity is a distraction

Generative AI companies have faced many copyright lawsuits, but something is different about the recent complaint by the New York Times. It is filled with examples of ChatGPT outputting near-verbatim copies of text from the NYT. Copyright experts think this puts the Times in a very strong position. We are not legal experts, and we won’t offer any commentary on the lawsuit itself. Our interest is in the bigger picture: the injustice of labor appropriation in generative AI. Unfortunately, the legal argument that has experts excited — output similarity — is almost totally disconnected from…

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