Though this sounds extreme, enforcing the alternative would break any last remnant of human privacy. It would kill the independent operation of computing as we know it and severely cripple AI/ML research when we need it most: human alignment.
It is possible that a catastrophic event occurs and halts the supply chain of advanced semiconductors in the near future, in which case the debate can be postponed indefinitely.
Yep. They could. And people do.
But this particular use is entirely new, though. Old conceptions of fair use can't and shouldn't cover it. "Transformative"? Sure, but there's a difference between transforming a work once and laying hold of it in automation to be transformed on request millions or billions of times in degrees ranging from simple to convoluted. It's hard to argue that the right to this exists in fair use when awareness of the possibility didn't exist when fair use conceptions were constructed.
The output isn't the issue so much as the consent & consideration for use of the input. We'll need case law or statutory law that understands this. It should be possible, but it should be possible on an opt-in basis. When you're training a model, you should know.
> AI-generated images are no more infringing than human-generated images which show influences from other artists.
If we end up with a policy differentiating the two and privileging humans and works created by them, I'm fine with that.
For example, even a short sample used in a song usually has to be licensed. Cover versions of songs may qualify for a compulsory license with a set royalty payment scale.
However some reuse (such as transformative use, parodies, or use of snippets for various purposes, especially non-commercial purposes) may be considered fair use. AI companies could very reasonably argue that use of images for training AI models is transformative and qualifies as fair use, that no components of the original images are reused in AI-generated images, and that AI-generated images are no more infringing than human-generated images which show influences from other artists.
Absent additional law, I expect the legal system will have to sort out whether AI-generated images infringe the copyright of their training images, and if so what sort of licensing would be appropriate for AI-generated (or other software/machine-generated) images based on training data from images that are under copyright.