I beg to differ. AI-output did not entitle the person creating the prompt for IP protections, so far – but my objection is not directed towards the "so far", but towards your omission of "the person creating the prompt", because if an AI outputs copyrighted material from the training data, that material is still copyrighted. AI is not a magical copyright removal machine.
What this means in practice is that (currently), all output of an LLM is legally considered to not be copyrightable (to the extent that it's an original work). If it happens to regurgitate an existing copyrighted work, though, is that infringement? I'm not sure we have a legal precedent on that question yet.
The Thaler case here is something different than "AI-generated = uncopyrightable" though. Thaler was not trying to copyright work in the way humans who make work with tools normally copyright their work ("Copyright 2026 by Me"), he was specifically trying to give AI the copyright ("Copyright 2026 by My-AI-Tool"). The court rejected this because only humans can own copyright.
I believe there are other cases where AI-generated works were found uncopyrightable but Thaler is not a good example* of them.
There’s several large settlements that say Anthropomorphic/OAI didn’t want to have legal precedent. In general if it’s not outright regurgitated it would be derivative.
The out of court settlements that avoid precedent don't mean anything in a broader legal context. Legally speaking, right now in the USA, output of LLMs is not copyrighted and cannot be copyrighted (without substantial transformation by a human).
I don't think this means the same thing as whether or not LLM output can infringe on someone else's copyright though (that does pose an interesting question -- can something non-copyrightable in general infringe on something copyrighted?).
I don't believe that you require to do much to claim copyright over an output of an LLM.
The input prompt is under copyright - a simple modification to the source code will grant copyright to you.
I'm afraid as of last week this is now as settled as it gets in US law: the output of LLMs is not per se copyrightable, though arrangements and modifications of it can be. It's like a producer who made a song entirely with public domain audio samples: he can't then demand the compulsory license when someone resamples that song.
They actually wouldn't, since they'd be sampling the new arrangement. They could reconstruct a new, similar sounding arrangement based on the original samples, but it'd be have to be different enough to that new arrangement so as not to be considered derivative of it.
That also applies to generative AI, pure output may not be copyrightable but as soon as you do something beyond type some words and press a button, like doing area-specific infills and paintovers, which involve direct and deliberate choices by a human, the copyrighted human-driven arrangement becomes so deeply intertwined with the generative work that it's effectively inseperable.
There's no technical need to do that, because someone who can always deliver electricity would be able to struck contracts with those that always need it, i.e. heavy industry, esp. aluminum and chemistry. The reason why downregulation was necessary in the 2000s and 2010s was regulation ("Einspeisevorrang"), not technology.
If someone takes it near the power plant, and all the infrastructure is there for it. You don't build a (large) nuclear power plant just for these customers though.
Generally, with a high amount of renewable but fluctuating supply, we have to get away from the base load model, towards a residual load model.
This is not true, since you still need to pay for capex and depreciation. The reason it appears to be free is not because its production doesn’t cost anything, but because at times of a glut there‘s just no one willing to pay much for it. Please make some good will effort to acknowledge the difference between cost and price.
Now, about your question, why people should buy „expensive“ nuclear power: for the same reason that people buy health insurance for: volatility increases risk, and you’re willing to pay an ongoing premium to reduce systemic risks. Over- and undersupply of electricity are risks for a lot of businesses and lots of them spend a lot of money on capex to avoid them, e.g. hospitals that have diesel generators. Generators are for a different failure mode (rare, longer duration outages), but for the high frequency, short time interruptions and/or price spikes caused by unbalanced generation volatility, contracts with a nuclear power company are similar; the capex is just shifted to the power company, and the customer might pay a premium during those times that other sources would deliver energy „for free“.
That said, this is not a black-and-white scenario. Of course we can benefit a lot from solar and wind. I’m not very positive about large scale batteries and lean more towards having flexible consumers, e.g. H2 production for the chemical industry. But right now, we don’t have the choice of nuclear vs. renewables, it’s (renewables + nuclear) vs. (renewables + turbines run with Russian gas or LNG from the US and Qatar). My choice here is clear, and it should not be muddied by the Russian propaganda of nuclear power clogging our electricity grids.
What about the code that wasn't even GPL, but "all rights reserved", i.e., without any license? That's even stronger than GPL and based on your reasoning, this would mean that any code created by an LLM is not licensed to be used for anything.
You get it wrong. Copyright is excluding you from using something, a license is allowing you to use something. So „no license“ does NOT mean „free to use“, but „not allowed to use“.
If you do not hold copyright, you cannot prevent someone from copying a thing. If you cannot prevent someone from copying the thing, then "licensing" it is somewhere between pretty weird and pretty stupid, no?
No, because OP implied that the AI generated content inherits the LICENSE: in their view, if the input has been GPL, The output must be GPL. So if the input hasn’t been licensed at all, the output cannot be licensed. The inheritance of „no license“ is not „no copyright“, but „no license“. The question of copyright applies hasn’t been definitely answered yet, but just because it is likely that the person PROMPTING the AI doesn’t gain copyright, doesn’t mean that an output that is 1:1 derived from copyrighted material loses its copyrighted status. That would be truly ridiculous.
As you note, this is a legal question that has not yet been answered. I think that speculating on the outcome in the current legal climate is fruitless.
I did not refer to privacy rights. If you post a photo of yourselves online, you're giving up on a tiny part of your privacy rights. So my question still stands: would running your photos that you have taken of yourselves through a diffusion model rip your copyright of your photo?
So we have two positions here:
1) LLMs are trained on non-licensed information, so anything coming out of them must be created without a license, so no one should be allowed to use it.
2) LKMs are trained on public information, so everything coming out of the must be public domain.
These two positions are mutually exclusive and I feel that both are not entirely false, but also certainly not fully correct.
Is this true once you use a fancy filter of the photo app of your choice? Is this true once your phone applies such a filter without asking you? Should this be true for Theseus‘ Ship?
We also shouldn't call it "vegan leather" when it is in fact just plastic.
Naming departs from technical accuracy when adopted by the masses, as they retrofit their common understanding. Wouldn't be too surprised if "vaccine" ends up covering other strong defense-boosters.
Mycelium is neat, but last time I heard of it the problem was far, far too low manufacturing throughput.
I don't think anyone would even consider marketing that as "vegan leather", as doing so would mean putting you in the same bucket as cheap-as-dirt polyurethane (which is what regular "vegan leather" is), at an astronomically higher price. You'd pick a new term to differentiate.
I found it funny because the opposite direction, people accused Tesla of naming “autopilot” misleadingly, because it gave them the impression of fully unattended self-driving.
In aviation, autopilot features were until recently (and still for GA pilots) essentially just cruise control: maintain this speed and heading, maintain this climb rate and heading, maintain this bank angle, etc.
Wouldn't be too surprised, either - but I still think there's merit in using words in a more precise manner than the marketing department would like to do.
A good example for the discussion: leather being animal skin which obviously cannot come from a mushroom.
Assuming you were countering my vegan leather claim: Products marketed "vegan leather" is polyurethane or similar, and for marketing reasons you would use a different term if you did something fancier to differentiate. My gut feeling is that a mycelium-based product would be far more expenisive than simple polyurethane, and quite an upsell.
Not sure what "baking your own bread" means if you are using wheat grown by someone else in an oven that you didn't build that is run with electricity you didn't created from your muscles' force. You haven't even contributed to the nuclear fusion which created the oxygen for the water molecules you've been using! How dare you, standing of the shoulders of giants!
Is it "building your own oven" if you go to Lowe's, buy an oven, and installed it yourself? You've done some work, but your integrating a pre-built appliance into your kitchen, not built your own oven
This would been that more competition would be good for the environment because it would drive down prices and margins, and thus the incentive to overproduce. But this rule actually decreases the competitive pressure and increases margins because market exit barriers = market entry barriers
I beg to differ. AI-output did not entitle the person creating the prompt for IP protections, so far – but my objection is not directed towards the "so far", but towards your omission of "the person creating the prompt", because if an AI outputs copyrighted material from the training data, that material is still copyrighted. AI is not a magical copyright removal machine.
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