NERFs are interesting from a film-making and art point of view. AI isn't going anywhere. Any sort of ruling would have zero impact on this kind of AI. Tech will move forward regardless of the ruling. The issue is about datasets, not the software itself. I expect all of the suits against the underlying technology to be dismissed. If the lawsuit is successful in blocking AI, it would have a lot of negative implications for fair use and be a gross mischaracterization of the underlying math.
I think we need a clear ruling on how copyright should be handled from things generated using AI. Once you modify it in some way, you clear the bar for making a transformative work, but the difficult questions is how and if the copyright of the input dataset applies to raw generated media.
No one is having the same discussion regarding the input and output of ChatGPT. Even the discussion against CoPilot is weak. But a ruling in a case will affect every other one. It's not really possible for laws to differentiate between text and photos, because photos are stored digitally as text. During my research, my PI explained to me that copyright work is fine to test with and make datasets with, but I can't include benchmarks against it or for it in my final paper. But the weights generated from such work is fine. This is only really a problem because these models are being used in commercial ways.
Dear God, no. Let the tech keep moving forward so we can show the legislators and the world the kinds of things we can build unimpeded.
Do you think anyone will be "just an artist" if we can put the entire power of Disney/Pixar in their back pocket? People will be making astonishing things by the time this decade closes out.
AI translates raw thought to material form without requiring the talent, capital, and blood/sweat resources to craft it. It'll improve our society's ability to make sense of one another.
Your average Reddit poster might have a lot that they want to say. Your average engineer might dream of stories they can never tell. That cliff of impossibly, and the opportunity cost to climb it, will no longer stand in our way.
Please let's not stop the biggest, most important series of advances in our lifetimes to squabble over dated copyright. The concept binds us to the past.