DaveTheCoder But copyright laws don't prevent anyone from reading the book and learning to use the author's writing style.
When a AI engine uses the book in its training, so that anyone can effortlessly use the author's writing style, is that a copyright violation?
My personal feelings are... human imitation is a form of flattery. A human has to put in the time and effort, and often passion, to analyze your work and learn from it. You can generally tell if a human cared about the source material and was inspired by it or if they were plagirizing out of laziness. Intent matters too, and genAI cannot have intent.
GenAI imitation feels like disrespect. Like you think the artist's work - something they put a part of themselfs into - is so disposable you can shove it into a machine to make soulless copies without ever truly engaging with it, 99% of the time without acknowledging the original creator let alone paying. And if you train the model on so many different artists that the individuals don't matter anymore, that's arguably even worse. Now you're actually treating them like their lifes and works are replaceable bits of data. That's simply not how artists and inspiration work. These comparisons only work if you don't think about them too hard and only treat art as the final products, stripped from intent or anything personal.
(Edit: Maybe you could argue all this personal stuff won't matter in court, but no well-adjusted human would sue another human for simply being inspired in the first place. Even most companies are okay with people using their property in small ways when it's in good faith - e.g. fanart, fan conventions - but most definitely aren't okay with having it trained on without permission. We're already seeing the lawsuits.)
"effortleslly" is a part of the issue too. Why would I ever read a book that had no effort put into it? Why should I bother listening to music that nobody could be bothered to make?
