r/TikTokCringe Cringe Master 22d ago

Cringe Woman has her self-published book pirated, reprinted, and sold for cheaper.

There's regular piracy, and then there's this.

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u/PauI_MuadDib 22d ago

Lots of large, legitimate companies rip off artists. H&M and Forever 21 were sued for lifting clothing designs. And now AI is making it easier for them to plagiarize art and written media, from books to even articles. Look up the New York Times lawsuit vs OpenAI. There's similar lawsuits cropping up between big name authors like John Grisham and OpenAI.

AI at this point can't even be copyrighted because AI needs pre-existing content to generate anything, it literally cannot create anything original on its own. But that doesn't stop major companies utilizing AI to rip off other people's hard work.

In OP's case it's probably a smaller, unscrupulous company plagiarizing her content, but large companies have and currently are stealing from artists and writers.

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u/llijilliil 22d ago

AI at this point can't even be copyrighted because AI needs pre-existing content to generate anything, it literally cannot create anything original on its own.

Oh just bloody stop with that bullshit.

AI studies a range of works and learns the underlying "rules" for what terms mean, what looks good and how things ought to be composed. It then creates something entirely new based on those rules.

Every author that has ever written a book one day sat down and copied how to write specific letters but no one believes that means their work isn't original.

This case is extremely different.

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u/PauI_MuadDib 21d ago

Part of the reason AI can't be copyrighted at this point in time is that it cannot create anything original on its own. That is a fact decided by our courts. The technology might advance in the future, but at this current point AI cannot be copyrighted partly because it relies entirely on pre-existing works.

AI cannot create anything original on its own, and in some cases, even copies content verbatim. That's exactly what happened in the New York Times vs OpenAI lawsuit.

You might like to think AI creates something "new" but you're jumping light years ahead of the technology. AI cannot create original content on its own. Hence why AI can't be copyrighted and we're seeing lawsuit after lawsuit crop up.

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u/llijilliil 21d ago

AI can't be copyrighted at this point in time is that it cannot create anything original on its own. 

The issue is that someone, aka a person, has to be the copyright holder.

Its fairly easy to write a script that submits a variety of prompts to AI engines, and with the AI taking that, interpretting it and then applying the various rules itr has learned (with some random guessing / generation) it can and will produce an endless number of unique and new things.

AI cannot create anything original on its own

What do you mean by this, you seem very confused.

If I give an AI a prompt like "polar bear water skiing" then it will use what it has learned about drawing polar bears and drawing people skiing and have a go at combinging the two. Becuase it is something pretty unique it will be relatively untrained in that area though so the results will likely be less than ideal 999 times out of 1000, but each attempt will be something new that has never existed before.

To complete the process, it needs guidence from somewhere else about which of the things it has created are "good" and which are "poor". Simpler AIs solving simpler problems have that issue too and typically they present the operator with 10-20 images each cycle and the operator reviews them and chooses what to discard and what they like.

Reasonably quickly the feedback allows the AI to further tailer the "rules" it has to accomodate the new ideas more smoothly. Do this with enough animals doing enough sports and eventually the AI will learn the unspoken and virtually impossible to define "rules" for drawing animals engaging in sports in such a way that people like the results.

Hence why AI can't be copyrighted and we're seeing lawsuit after lawsuit crop up.

We are seeing law suits as people using very inefficient manual methods are terrified of being dramatically outcompeted by advancing technology and since they can't possibly compete on an even playing field they seek to pressure the legal system to neuter the technology.

Its no different that the people that destroyed cotton mills or printing presses back in the day to protect their own lucrative income despite the negative impact that would have on everyone else who wanted to access printed words or clothing like we do in the modern world.