That’s not a meaningful distinction, I spent all day using a Copilot search engine because the answers I wanted were scattered across a bunch of different documentation sites.
It was both using the AI models to interpret my commands (not generation at all), and then only publishes content to me specifically.
Technically it is meaningful, fair use is for specifically things that don’t replace the original in function.
Depends on what the function was. If the function was to drive ad revenue to your site, then sure, if the function was to get information into the public, then it’s not replacing the function so much as altering and updating it.
If that “altering and updating” means people don’t need to read the original anymore, then it’s not fair use.
TBH I’m for reigning in copyright substantially, and would be on the shitty text generator company side of this, but only if it makes a precedent and erodes copyright as a whole instead of just creating a carveout if you have a lot of moeny for lawyers.
It’s absolutely a meaningful distinction. Search engines push people to tour website where you can capitalize on your audience however you see fit. LLM’s take your content, through them through the mixer and sell it back to people. It’s the difference between a movie reviewer explaining a movie and a dude in an alley selling a pirated copy of the movie.
A) An LLM does not inherently sell you anything. Some companies charge you to run and use their LLMs (OpenAI), and some companies publish their LLMs open source for anyone to use (Meta, Microsoft). With neural chips starting to pop in PCs and phones, pretty soon anyone will be able to run an open source LLM locally on their machine, completely for free.
B) LLMs still rarely regurgitate the exact same original source. This would be more like someone in the back alley putting on their own performance of the movie and morphing it and adjusting it in real time based on your prompts and comments, which is a lot closer to parody and fair use than blatant piracy.
