How Big Tech Is Exploiting Content Creators, And (Trying To) Get Away With It

Diving into current courtroom dramas around AI, copyright, and the true meaning of “fair use.”

That’s right you heard us, Open AI. Source: Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

If you’re reading this, you’re part of the content creator ecosystem: either as a fellow writer, casual consumer or a Medium subscriber. You help keep the system running, which means you have a stake in the subject of today’s post, which will be all about copyright concerns and Generative AI.

I’ve been keeping an interested eye on this topic for a while. As both a writer and someone working with “Gen AI” every day, it’s in my own personal and professional best interests to do so. Of course, copyright isn’t the only legal and ethical issue tied to Gen AI, nor is Gen AI the first technology to raise such flags. However, it has captured public attention on an entirely new scale, which is why I’m diving into it today.

Setting the Scene

Let’s start with key stakeholders and critical questions. So far, the most vocal stakeholders in discourse on Generative AI and copyright law have been:

• builders of Generative AI models,
• consumers of such models’ outputs,
• and content producers, whose IP may wind up in…