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If I grab a copy of Adobe Photoshop (yeah, I know it runs in on a remote computer nowadays called 'the cloud') and I use it not to create the creative content its meant to be used for (manipulating cat pics, obviously) but to run it through IDA or Ghidra, or to study and use it to create a competitor (GIMP or make GIMP more like Photoshop) then even though I don't use it for its primary purpose; it is still copyright infringement.

Same with this crawling by bots (Google, Bing, Meta, OpenAI; doesn't matter). Jurisprudence on Google News and Google Cache seems to show citing is OK, if done in moderation. Remember: just because you can access (download) something on the internet (WWW or otherwise) does not mean you're allowed to watch, use, save it. That argument was lost during the battles of copyright infringement in the years of 2000s.

OpenAI isn't even citing in moderation. Its making a derivative work without citing (hence obscuring) it does.

The bottom line is this: ML which doesn't cite sources should be regarded as hostile: a blackbox, and a copyright infringement paradise.




> Photoshop [...] runs in on a remote computer

Does it? Last time I checked, “cloud” in “Creative Cloud” meant “now you have to pay a monthly subscription”.

And reverse engineering Photoshop to make a competitor might be a legal practice, if done properly – for example, see the ReactOS project.

Aside from that, I think your point still stands though.


Most of Photoshop works offline, but some of the newer 'AI' features run on Adobe servers and need an online connection (and account) to work.


Yeah, that's probably right, but I don't think that's what OP is talking about here.


>it is still copyright infringement.

I doubt it's copyright infringement in this case, at most it's just against the ToS.

>Its making a derivative work

A derivative work includes major copyrightable elements of a first, previously created original work, and that's how it's treated in court. Most AIs will not generate derivative works (unless you ask them to).




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