Many maintain that their broad use of copyrighted material is legal under the doctrine of "fair use," which courts apply using a complex four-part standard.
However, as Giordano notes, "the public status of copyrighted material" is not one of those factors.
A decade ago, the Google Books decision held that Google's use of "text snippets" to catalogue published works was an acceptable fair use, and AI companies often point to Google's win to back their argument.
The second argument is that copyright is not an issue in AI training because AI systems don't copy material: They just "learn" from it the way a human might.
Reality check: AI companies often refuse to say which "publicly available" data they are using, with OpenAI and others describing their sources as a competitive trade secret."
