Ok, sure, but that's not a GenAI thing, that's a plain old boring copyright thing. If I draw a bunch of C3POs and slap them on my Adwords website then I can expect a C&D letter post haste, who cares if the material in question came out of my pen, Photoshop or a GenAI model?
If the model was trained on works by artists (without their knowledge or consent, as seems to be the case) and you get it to spit out art that is basically identical in either content or style to that artist, and they don’t know, or are too poor to effectively sue you, should they just suffer? If you then make money off what is effectively their work, why shouldn’t they get paid? If they only work on commission and rightfully charge a premium, are you not actively gouging their business (knowingly or not)?
I don’t think they should miss out on the protections, or the ability to make money off their work if they desire. The fact that LLM’s give this “plausible deniability” shouldn’t be an excuse to tolerate it.
Style isn't protected by copyright. Maybe there's an argument that it should be, but right now that's not a protection which exists.
Training is neither publication nor distribution, so copyright is entirely out of scope at that step. Again, maybe there's a moral argument for some sort of control, but copyright is completely the wrong framework to think about it in.
