Did AI companies win a fight with authors? Technically

In the past week , big AI companies have — in theory — chalked up two big legal wins.

But far from settling the legal conundrums around modern AI , these rulings might have just made things even more complicated.

Neither case addressed one of the biggest questions about generative AI : When does its output infringe copyright?.

An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Meta used Anthropic ’s software to scan authors’ books for its central library by downloading them from pirated libraries.

Aaron Carroll : In many circumstances it will be illegal to copy copyright-protected works to train generative AI models without permission.

Carroll: Companies will generally need to pay copyright holders for the right to use their materials.

The biggest AI companies have billions of dollars in investment — they can weather a lot.

But smaller, particularly open source players might be much more vulnerable.

If Chhabria ’s theory is right, artists could reap a reward for providing training data to AI giants.

That would still leave us in a spam-filled landscape with no room for future artists.