The opposite is also concerning. IP law has always been convoluted, messy, contradictory, and morally ambiguous. The complaints of IP violation by LLMs are simply taking these inherent flaws and making them immediately obvious, forcing decisions that ultimately will set precedents on the legality of human thought that I don’t think anyone will be comfortable with. People understandably see OpenAI and Microsoft as potentially dangerous to be given so much leeway, but fail to consider on the flip side companies like Disney who have already more or less dictated the majority of copyright law for decades now. They must be chomping at the bit at the legal precedents potentially coming down the pipeline that call into question the ability to interact with any kind of media or information at any level without potentially being on the hook monetarily.

I think all this is doing is making us realize that we have built a massive economic system on a fundamentally flawed idea of ownership over ideas, and the only two solutions will be to tear up the rule book, which will be extremely painful, or double down, which will be fatal.