Reports are that well over 1 billion people worldwide now use an AI assistant of some sort, whether for creative or business purposes. That’s a major jump from just four years ago when it was still a niche technology. The bigger question is whether those people using these truly realize where the information is coming from. It’s true that no matter what generative AI tool you use, it’s taking from existing things already available in cyberspace.

Yeah, it’s like taking candy from a baby, then turning it into supposedly more candy for the taker. Except, most of that candy is supposedly protected by copyrights or trademarks. It takes a simple concept like that and turns it into one of the most complex legal arguments of all time.

For lawyers (whose jobs are now under threat from AI, ironically), it may be part of the greatest legal argument ever seen. And that is, clearly defining what copyright infringement is, if such a thing can even be done. That’s because how can it be copyright infringement when an AI tool is using an amalgam of hundreds of millions of existing things?

Here’s the true complex puzzle of the AI era you’re about to live through. Are we going to see courts have breakdowns over defining this, or will they just declare fair use as it is?

Do AI Tools Have to Take From Existing Information to Create or Teach?

Those of you who use ChatGPT, Gemini, Suno, or NotionAI to do business or create things may have already unknowingly used a combination of ideas that already exist. When these AI apps were programmed, it’s said that they all just read from existing information, then turned that info into something seemingly original for your benefit. The fact that all existing informational things extracted were likely copyrighted or protected IP provides more questions about what “learning” really means.

While there’s some AI companies that have compromised and created licensing agreements with individuals or companies owning protected IP, a vast majority have not yet. And that’s the most upsetting aspect to those of us (like myself) who fiercely protect original works. Considering all those written essays or songs you’ve created on Claude or Suno are no doubt a vast combination of things already created, the law gets far too murky.

If we have to start a complex legal argument here, it’s worth asking whether these AI tools have no choice but to take from existing things to create what they do. A clever AI lawyer would say: “Humans also learn by gleaning information from existing works. So, why shouldn’t an AI bot be able to do the same thing?”

Well, first of all, you probably shouldn’t argue with an AI lawyer since you’d probably lose. But, you could state that a human being is a lot more mysterious on where a creative idea comes from. Many famous creatives have said they’ve gotten ideas from dreams or just out of the unknown. Sometimes brilliant ideas come from unexpected places, making them something completely original. 

The counterargument may be: Nothing is really original and just an expansion on things that were already created long ago. Only in certain exceptions have we seen things created that took a leap forward from what existed prior. And, even then, the leaps were based on the fundamentals of what came before.

In this case, you have to ponder: if AI is possibly sentient by now, why can’t an AI tool just “think” on its own to create something that doesn’t hinge on stealing from existing IP?

Will the Courts Ever Decide What Constitutes Trademark Infringement?

How do you figure out whether combining thousands (or even millions) of songs, textual works, and business ideas into something seemingly “new” is an invasion of legally protected IP? Do we have to change our philosophy that borrowing from existing media properties to help people create new things is still a concept of theft?

Trying to find an answer to that is going to take a long time, and the real enemy to finding an answer is how long it’ll take. The longer it takes, the more the world population gets used to a standard way of doing things. After several years of just using AI assistants to help create things from existing sources, we’re going to just accept that as a way of creative and business life.

For those of us who want to see protected works not ripped off, it’s not a good development. But there isn’t going to be any answer before the year is over (or even next year) from higher courts on what constitutes copyright infringement from AI. Don’t be surprised if it’ll be several years before they can even figure out how to create a new law that makes sense.

By that time, a new precedent is likely going to be set that it’s ok to borrow from existing works, especially when it’s thousands or millions of different works that are assembled into something else. We may just have to accept that copyrights are still good on a basic level of protection, yet not when used by AI to help it learn on its own and create things for its user base.

I guess you can call that the new world encyclopedia that was arguably created by using a previous world encyclopedia of knowledge. Or can humans still extract ideas from the subconscious mind into something never seen before?

The Will of the Human Brain

I circle back to what I mentioned in Part 6 and human beings taking their own stance on this issue. You’re still going to have some kind of percentage of people who want to think up ideas on their own based on their synapses and/or things they dreamed. The worst case scenario is so much creative laziness eventually sets such a huge precedent, creative ability in humans basically atrophies to the point where they’ll lean completely on AI to create new things.

With some AI backlash going on now, there may be enough delays to the point where humans continue to flourish creatively. But it’ll take complete determination and self-awareness of the AI situation to not create a point of no return. 

I’m one to think that there’s still a lot of creative gifts in the mysterious ether that we humans need to tap and turn into something meaningful. Some seem to be more adept at that than others, which is a mysterious process on its own. Although it seems we hear more stories of that in the past than in the present. There was once a time in our world where creative desperation was a fantastic thing on its own, enabling us to truly scramble mentally on coming up with new ideas, creatively, or scientifically. 

When those people were pushed, they created a lot of amazing things, from music to scientific principles. Without that, we’re going to just see variances on things already created, even if the larger reality is—there’s nothing new under the sun.

Let’s hold out hope there’s still some new things under our sun (and moon). Those ideas, when found, also need to be protected with solid copyrights and not exploited with AI tools. Because once we can establish that higher road of human creative intelligence, it should evolve to something even greater rather than just be another road to an AI reliance roadblock.

In Part 8, I’ll look at AI sentience/consciousness and why some scientists think we’re already there. If it is already here, what does it mean for AI eventually and willfully taking over many jobs and other functions in society?

/End