Yeah. I’m thinking more along the lines of research and open models than anything to do with OpenAI. Fair use, above all else, generally requires that the derivative work not threaten the economic viability of the original and that’s categorically untrue of ChatGPT/Copilot which are marketed and sold as products meant to replace human workers.

The clean room development analogy is definitely an analogy I can get behind, but raises further questions since LLMs are multi stage. Technically, only the tokenization stage will “see” the source code, which is a bit like a “clean room” from the perspective of subsequent stages. When does something stop being just a list of technical requirements and veer into infringement? I’m not sure that line is so clear.

I don’t think the generative copyright thing is so straightforward since the model requires a human agent to generate the input even if the output is deterministic. I know, for example, Microsoft’s Image Generator says that the images fall under creative Commons, which is distinct from public domain given that some rights are withheld. Maybe that won’t hold up in court forever, but Microsoft’s lawyers seem to think it’s a bit more nuanced than “this output can’t be copyrighted”. If it’s not subject to copyright, then what product are they selling? Maybe the court agrees that LLMs and monkeys are the same, but I’m skeptical that that will happen considering how much money these tech companies have poured into it and how much the United States seems to bend over backwards to accommodate tech monopolies and their human rights violations.

Again, I think it’s clear that commerical entities using their market position to eliminate the need for artists and writers is clearly against the spirit of copyright and intellectual property, but I also think there are genuinely interesting questions when it comes to models that are themselves open source or non-commercial.