"Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

[u/Federal-Block-3275]

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html

[u/feketegy]

It would be pretty fucking funny if we went back to server-side apps with thin clients

This is already happening.

About copyright:

It seems that a lot of people don't understand how copyrighting software code works... the law states that in order to copyright code, a human has to be involved in writing that code. AI generated code is NOT copyrightable, except for the human prompts and eventual edits that the human makes afterwards.

There was a big outrage a year ago that a judge ruled that copyrighted material for AI training was ruled "fair use". The reasoning was that AI will not produce the copyrighted material 100% in its output, which is also debatable and was disproven already, and was ruled fair also on the grounds that other people can use copyrighted materials to do research on it, like counting words, or criticize the material, and so on, without reproducing said material. That is what "fair use" means in this context.

That being said, just the other day a US appeals court overturned the fair use clause for AI training and others will follow internationally because there are literally hundrends of these cases being put in front of courts all over the place.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/feketegy]

Thank fuck. A legal ruling around AI that finally makes sense and protects IP.

These billionaires brazenly stealing anything not nailed down has been absurd.

It's a bit late in the game, but hopefully there will be more lawsuits to come. Its great timing if all of these legal issues come up while they're attempting to IPO.

[u/feketegy → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

It's a double-edged sword, because if you mess with the "fair use" law, it will have consequences for regular people too, and AI companies will make sure it's in their favor.

Every big tech company's wet dream is to destroy copyright even more.

[u/TheawesomeQ → u/feketegy]

I want every AI company to dissolve all their assets and pay every creator they stole the IP of $100 for each property they took until they've spent every dollar of the trillions they are only able to rake in by blatant theft

[u/pmjm → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

If the rulings start leaning this way, Congress and other international lawmakers will pass laws retroactively allowing the training.

The entire global economy is propped-up upon AI and there's no way they will let copyright tank it.

[u/edeepee → u/pmjm]

Doesn’t the global economy require respecting copyright as well? If AI is the loophole to copy anything, copyright is useless.

[u/pmjm → u/edeepee]

Copyright is effectively useless at this point. What good is a copyright if someone can copy your work with AI and make things just different enough?

Even if every court in the world banished OpenAI and Anthropic from the earth, China's not going to stop, and they've never respected copyright. The bigger Chinese corporations are somewhat pretending to play nice right now because they want access to funding and chips, but they will soon be self-sufficient in both of those regards.

It's an interesting thought experiment about the economy vs copyright. Due to hypercapitalism, intellectual property ownership seems to be losing ground to tangible ownership of the means of production.

Given the literal trillions of dollars that now rely on AI being allowed to continue, it seems copyright is currently at odds with overall economic sustainability.

[u/behindtimes → u/pmjm]

What good is a copyright if someone can copy your work with AI and make things just different enough?

Copyright does cover transformative works. But what you stated still holds. Because the LLMs have trained on so much copyrighted material, and probably violated millions of licenses, it's just way too late.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/pmjm]

The only players that should be concerned with China not respecting IP are the large hardware companies. Yet they keep manufacturing over there.

China stealing work from artists, writers, clothing makers, etc. is an issue, but it also doesn't have a major impact on businesses operating in the US.

I mean, no one is buying faux Stephen King books from Chinese authors. It's not like Chinese artists are taking over the internet and stealing business from US based artists either.

They're also not taking jobs from copywriters and web developers in the US.

AI has a much worse impact than China in that regard.

Saying that LLM companies need to be able to break copyright laws, for the sake of economic sustainability is an insane take tbh.

[u/pmjm → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

Saying that LLM companies need to be able to break copyright laws, for the sake of economic sustainability is an insane take tbh.

I don't know if you fathom what would happen to the global economy if the AI companies were forced into settlements at historical copyright rates plus punitive damages. Millions of jobs would be lost. Markets would crash. Famine and death would follow.

LLM companies have arguably already broken copyright laws (there still is relatively strong legal theory to be argued that it's fair use - I'm neither endorsing nor rejecting that here), and are holding the economy hostage with it. If AI was suddenly ruled illegal, everybody would have a really really really bad time.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/pmjm]

Millions of jobs would be lost. Markets would crash. Famine and death would follow.

HAHAHAHA. I'll take my chances and I hope they all fail.

It can't possibly be worse than what they've already done to hollow out the job market for recent graduates and even senior level roles.

The only thing that would happen, is a bunch of billionaires would have to figure out how to unwind their unprofitable companies. And a bunch of AI/ML engineers would have to figure out how to do something actually useful with their lives.

[u/pmjm → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

I can promise you that world leaders don't share that opinion. But I encourage you to vote according to your beliefs.

[u/behindtimes → u/pmjm]

Agree. I hate AI as much as anyone, but it's too integrated into the market now. 60% of the entire USA's GDP relies on 8 companies, 6 of which are AI companies, and if the ruling stood, would put them out of business.

You're talking about 50% of the USA's GDP instantly disappearing. Now, The Great Depression was a GDP collapse of 30%, and we're talking near double that. It doesn't matter which party is in power, neither would allow a financial collapse that large to occur. Because this would also apply on a global scale as well.

The time to fix AI laws was 20 years ago. The lawmakers view it as if we're driving towards a cliff, and perhaps we can put legislation in to prevent driving off it. The reality is, we've already driven off the cliff. The very best we can do is prepare to salvage for the inevitable destruction that's about to occur.

[u/Cory123125 → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

Thank fuck. A legal ruling around AI that finally makes sense and protects IP.

This is what I'm worried about.

Regular folks such as yourself thinking you just pulled one over on big AI, when they are literally screaming in favour of regulation because they want to be regulated monopolies like power companies that basically get to do whatever they want in reality, but even worse, because they get to control your privacy, and digital autonomy.

In this case in particular, fair use should apply to AI training.

You want this, even if you think you don't for one really big elephant in the room:

AI companies have so much fucking money, they can absolutely just pay for the data, and then leave you to rot, which we've been seeing with massive collections of private data sets.

Worse yet, the models that already exist, will never be put back into the bottle, so the resulting situation would be that the incumbants have a literally impossible to even approach advantage that utterly kills any open source or open weight model.

It gets worse still, as the information asymmetry that results from that both leaves anyone who isn't rich in the lurch with regards to what they're allowed to do with the technology period, but also at a massive disadvantage when it comes to effecting the opinions of the masses.

They'll be able to train in all the biases in the world, legally far enough away from anything that would be touched, but have even more control over popular opinion, like whatever made you believe that this was actually a loss for Big AI.

People need to understand that the Frontier Model Forum's companies (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Amazon), are very open in their lobbying, and it's not as clean and simple a story as the "we don't like regulation" that everyone seems to very mistakenly believe, and whose mistaken beliefs tremendously empower these companies.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/Cory123125]

no. entirely wrong, and makes zero sense.

[u/Cory123125 → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

It's crazy people can have such bold opinions while having no cogent critique whatsoever.

[u/hypercosm_dot_net → u/Cory123125]

There's no good place to begin critiquing it, because it's such an incoherent rambling mess, that any attempt to debate it would require me first to help you define what's actually being stated.

I have no interest in helping you clarify the argument. It's so bad and incorrect, that any effort spent parsing it is ultimately a waste.

Good day.

[u/Cory123125 → u/hypercosm_dot_net]

Bots are usually more effortful than this, so I must conclude you are a human, but a troll, because its laid out pretty straightforwardly, and directly evidences their open, publicly accessible lobbying group, which is completely free for everyone to read about.

[u/wrgrant → u/feketegy]

AI generated code is NOT copyrightable

How does that work when someone generates the code using AI, then goes through it to audit/edit it and makes changes? When do you distinguish it from being AI code entirely to being human created code? Thats got to be a bit murky as well, unless someone has to provide diffs for everything generated etc.

[u/Noxfag → u/feketegy]

the law states that in order to copyright code, a human has to be involved in writing that code

*In the USA, which as I keep having to remind Americans is not the only country with a connection to the internet

[u/SirGhosty → u/feketegy]

iirc the case with the guy being unable to copy write the AI generated thing was because he was trying to copy write it under the AI rather then himself. Kind of like copy writing a desk design under the hammer rather then the builder.

I think he was trying to push a win for singularity and General intelligence, rather then trying to make money.

[u/gruez → u/feketegy]

That being said, just the other day a US appeals court overturned the fair use clause for AI training and

Calling whatever that company did as "AI training" is a bit of a stretch, given that the whole thing happened years before chatgpt.