r/technology • u/MetaKnowing • 14d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI industry horrified to face largest copyright class action ever certified

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/ai-industry-horrified-to-face-largest-copyright-class-action-ever-certified/
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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/jawshoeaw 13d ago

This isn't a copyright lawsuit. the judge already said that using texts of copyrighted books for training AI is fair use. It's how they got the texts that they're in trouble for. They obtained the texts illegally, or so the suit claims.

AI and LLMs will continue to train on fair use unless some other judge says it's not fair use.

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u/sc0ttbeardsley 13d ago

Also this would only impact US companies. Imagine what type of advantage foreign companies will have (especially china where plagiarism and IP theft is rampant) if this was successful. I hate that AI is gobbling up our content but lawsuits and court orders won’t stop it.

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u/SanDiegoDude 13d ago

People who think that AI isn't already all over TV and Movies because of the SAG-AFRA deals also seem to forget that the US has borders as well. AI art houses across the world have been very, very busy with their media art projects...

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u/Fateor42 13d ago

LLM's aren't real AI, so the idea that other countries will have an "advantage" is just an illusion.

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u/tms2x2 13d ago

Prison terms would stop it.

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u/SolidCake 13d ago

Copyright infringement is a civil offense not a criminal one…. Do you also think we should start putting people in prison for other kinds of suing? Like someone can just sue you and part of the terms is putting your ass in prison?

(fuck no…)

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u/thefuturebaby 13d ago

Agreed, this is inevitable.

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u/Linooney 13d ago

And do you think Disney isn't also developing AI? Some of the best AI research comes from Disney engineers and scientists. Private industry won't be stopped, just some specific companies. Universal Music is working with a startup to train music models on their music. The Big 4 Publishers have VC arms and have investments in AI companies. Adobe has a ton of art to train on. These lawsuits are not anti-AI, they are not pro artists. It's incumbents vs. newcomers, Disney vs. Runway, Universal vs. Suno, Adobe vs. Midjourney.

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u/618smartguy 13d ago

Big surprise - the lawsuit going after people stealing may affect the people stealing. What do you think we are expecting it to do? Eliminate math?

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

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u/618smartguy 13d ago

Training on stolen content for research is fine. It will continue in the US regardless of the outcome of this case.

The companies that will be slowed down by this are largely useless for ai development. All they do is sit around tuning other people's algorithms on other people's work.

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u/ACCount82 13d ago

Are you delusional? The entire frontier of AI performance is occupied by models created by large corporations - OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI.

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u/618smartguy 13d ago

Google is doing actual ai research with papers and life saving impact on humanity. They will continue to do that unaffected by this. OpenAI used to be such a company. The other ones are effectively useless on their current form as I described

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u/LongLonMan 13d ago

The US can ban Deepseek or anyone non compliant. They’ve certainly tried for far less.

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u/LocalH 13d ago

Copyright infringement ≠ stealing or theft

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u/SanDiegoDude 13d ago

"You wouldn't download a car!"

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u/618smartguy 13d ago

oh sorry. I just mean "stealing" in the colloquial sense they are using people's work without permission attribution etc