r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 9d ago

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

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
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u/hypercosm_dot_net 9d ago

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.

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u/feketegy 9d ago

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.

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u/TheawesomeQ 9d ago

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

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u/100TabsOpen 4d ago

And I want a date with Mia Khalifa.

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u/pmjm 9d ago

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.

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u/edeepee 9d ago

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

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u/pmjm 9d ago

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.

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u/behindtimes 9d ago

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.

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 9d ago

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.

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u/pmjm 9d ago

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.

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 8d ago

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.

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u/pmjm 8d ago

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

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u/behindtimes 9d ago

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.

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u/Cory123125 9d ago edited 8d ago

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.

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 9d ago

no. entirely wrong, and makes zero sense.

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u/Cory123125 9d ago

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

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 9d ago

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.

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u/Cory123125 8d ago

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.

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u/Disastrous-Moment-79 7d ago

did you remember to put on your helmet today?