What parent poster meant is that it is normal that news organisations reference each other and report/cite/rephrase each other reports. For example all other news papers reported about the Watergate scandal reported by Bernstein&Woodward in the Washington Post.

Yeah but for every instance of that are face hugger links blogs that will rewrite the article and almost meant to deprive the source of any credit.

It’s not clear to me where the line is.

Those cite the original source that they used to write the article, the gpt models don't.

Depends on your prompt

It is legal. Fair use. People have been doing it for ages. Almost every article you've ever read has some fair use of another article, book or news item, etc.

When it becomes a service where you make money but the source doesn’t is it still fair use?

Yeah. No one is out there suing the shit out of cliff notes because they published a summary of Catcher in the Rye.

they might if cliff notes starting copy pasting parts of the source into their articles and passing it off as original writing though :)

The Tolkien estate should get busy suing all the fantasy writers, comic artists, game developers and board and card game companies. Lots of cash there.

They have done some of that actually. Tolkien will be public domain in the nations that are at aithors death+50 in a few days. Sadly, it will be a much longer wait in mine and many others.

Newspapers generally don't "pass off" quotes as their own writing. They make clear which parts they quoted.

No, in US law at least there can be no copyright of facts, only presentation. If you convey the same facts in different words that isn't a matter of fair use, it's never even a matter of copyright in the first place.

How about things that aren’t quite facts? Reviews, opinions, etc.

Illegal to have the same opinion as someone?

I was inarticulate. Imagine a business that goes to some trouble to review businesses or products. Can we lift those and serve them ourselves? Non facts…

No, it is very specifically and deliberately fair use. That is the primary intended purpose of fair use. The New York Times doesn't own the news; they just own their articles.