Recently, and rather quietly, Anthrophic settled on a major class action lawsuit involving copyright. $1,5 billion payout to a group of authors. It sounds like a lot collectively, but the reality is that individual authors will likely only receive around $3000 each. Not so much after all.
The ruling against Anthropic was complex. They brought forward the argument that the need to train LLM’s on creative works was more important than individual authors rights. That if they actually had to pay for using each work, it would make the process unaffordable. The founders must have missed that class in Business 101 – the bit about inputs and outputs and profit margins.
But it’s AI!
Apparently that changes everything. While the judge partly bought into their argument, where they got caught out was that they’d used pirated copies. So, it’s okay to steal directly from someone but don’t buy stolen goods just because they’re cheaper? Oh, and don’t get caught. Except they did.
If there’s one thing about writers, it’s that they recognize their work, even a slight adaptation of it. In fiction especially, those words circulate mentally and are refined long before they’re actually written down. It’s a process, a craft, not easily forgotten. A skill that’s not easy to master, except AI wants to make it so. Does that make it okay?
The lawsuit forced Anthropic to pay up, but still they claimed no liability. The case also laid no precedent for training models on copyrighted works. Not surprisingly authors aren’t accepting this, nor should they. Now it’s Apple’s turn in the court room for copyright infringements.
Different case, same stakes
The lawsuit brought against Apple alleges that the company copied and used the authors works, without permission, without credit, and without compensation. Most importantly, the case claims that Apple stands to benefit financially from making use of the unauthorized use of works. Of course, profits are bigger if you don’t have to buy the materials to make what you’re selling. Make no mistake, they’re selling AI.
Would Apple or Anthropic dare to raid Nvidia’s stores for semi-conductors, because they need them? Because data centers depend on them, and AI couldn’t function without them. The SWAT teams would be all over the culprits, global, front-page headlines would sweep across news channels.
The reality is that the AI companies won’t steal from Nvidia. But people? Creators? Nope they don’t matter as much. AI matters more.
How is the above scenario any different from what AI companies are doing to authors, designers and other creatives? Yet it’s placated with – we need AI.
Need AI for what?
Spit out an email template, write a silly poem, generate a video for TikTok. Is that really the best use case for AI? The next time you’re generating a prompt to sound like Wordsworth and impress the ladies, consider what that literary legend would think of your inability to string a sentence together.
Words create context, they convince, divide, or inspire. Words are what connect us. Why give that away?
