this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2025
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Imagine you have a magic box that can generate any video you want. Some people ask it to generate fan fiction-like videos, some ask it to generate meme-like videos, and a whole lot of people ask it to generate porn.
Then there's a few people that ask it to generate videos using trademarked and copyrighted stuff. It does what the user asks because there's no way for it to know what is and isn't copyrighted. What is and isn't parody or protected fair use.
It's just a magic box that generates videos... Whatever the human asks for.
This makes some people and companies very, very upset. They sue the maker of the magic box, saying it's copying their works. They start PR campaigns, painting the magic box in a bad light. They might even use the magic box quite a lot themselves but it doesn't matter. To them, the magic box is pure evil; indirectly preventing them from gaining more profit... Somehow. Just like Sony was sued for making a machine that let people copy whatever videos they wanted (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios%2C_Inc.).
Before long, other companies make their own magic boxes and then, every day people get access to their own, personal magic boxes that no one can see the output from unless they share.
Why is this different from the Sony vs Universal situation? The AI magic box is actually worse at copying videos than a VCR.
When a person copies—and then distributes—a movie do we say the maker of the VCR/DVD burner/computer is at fault for allowing this to happen? No. It's the person that distributed the copyrighted work.
This analogy is absolutely bonkers. the VCR is not made out of copyrighted material. If the VCR does not spit bunch of copyrighted material on demand because the makers put it there. AI Image generation models cannot be created without copyrighted material. That is not even a controversial take.
A VCR spits out copyrighted material because the user put it there (by inserting a cassette). Just like how an AI can spit out something that resembles copyrighted works when a user asks it to do so.
It's not a perfect analogy but it fits. Especially from a legal perspective.