In a moment that might echo through the next decade of IP law, Judge Vince Chhabria openly questioned Meta’s claim that scraping copyrighted content for AI training qualifies as “fair use.” During a pivotal hearing in Tremblay v. OpenAI and Silverman v. Meta, the judge expressed disbelief that ingesting and reproducing copyrighted works—without permission or compensation—could be considered legally permissible. “I just don’t understand how that can be fair use,” he remarked, signaling not just skepticism but potential precedent.
This isn’t just about authors or AI companies—it’s a societal crossroads. 🛣️ When generative AI models are trained on creative labor without consent, compensation, or transparency, it exposes deep fractures in our legal frameworks. Who benefits from innovation built on uncompensated work? Can consent ever be implied when the scale is planetary, and the source is everything? 🌍📚
As the legal system grapples with AI’s appetite for data, one truth is emerging: permissionless innovation is crashing into the bedrock of copyright law—and judges are starting to say it out loud. 🧠📉
Meta’s defense? Their model “doesn’t memorize” and any use is “transformative.” But in a world where books can be regurgitated in AI responses and art styles cloned with ease, the line between transformation and exploitation is blurring fast. 🎨🪞
This hearing may be one of the first moments where the legal system pushes back—not to stop AI, but to ask: Who is protected when machines learn? 🧐
Full article here: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/05/judge-on-metas-ai-training-i-just-dont-understand-how-that-can-be-fair-use/
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