I have read that article and I have found it sorely insufficient at addressing the concerns of the artists who are having to deal with this new situation. The EFF is usually great but I cannot agree with them on this stance.
You speak of "IP holders" and "corporations", seemingly to give a connotation of overbearing nameless organizations to any attempt at legislation, but you don't have a single word to say about the independent artists who are being driven out of their artistic careers by this. It doesn't sound like you even considered what their side is like, just that you decided that it's "morally right" to have free access to everyone's works for AI training.
How fair is the "Fair Use" that lets artists get replaced by AI's trained on their works? Way to often AI proponents argue of current legal definitions as if this was merely a matter of some philosophical mind games rather than people's lives. The law exists to ensure people's rights and well-being. It's not sufficient for something to fit the letter of the law, if we want to judge it as just.
I did read this open letter, although I already wasn't expecting much, and I can only find it sappy, shallow and disingenuous. They may say that they don't care about using AI to replicate others' works, not only that's not sufficient to prevent it, it doesn't address all the artists' works that were still used without permission, attribution or compensation even if they use the resulting AI to produce works that don't resemble any other work in particular.
We see a unique opportunity in this moment to shape generative AI’s development responsibly. The broad concerns around human artistic labor being voiced today cannot be ignored. All too often, major corporations and other powerful entities use technology in ways that exploit artists’ labor and undermine our ability to make a living.
But this has already failed. AI has already been developed and released irresponsibly. Corporations are already using it to exploit artists labor. Many major models are themselves an exploitation of artists' labor. These are hollow words that don't even suggest a way to address the matter.
There is only one thing I want to hear from AI advocates if they intend to justify it. Not legal wording or technical details or philosophical discussions about the nature of creativity, because ultimately they don't address the material issues. Rather, how do they propose that the artists whose works they relied on ought to be supported. Because to scrape all their stuff and then to turn and say they are fated to be replaced, like many AI proponents do, is horribly callous, ungrateful and potentially more damaging to culture than any licensing requirement would be.
