US Copyright Office found AI companies breach copyright. Its boss was fired

Well, firing someone for this is super weird. It seems like an attempt to censor an interpretation of the law that:

1. Criticizes a highly useful technology 2. Matches a potentially-outdated, strict interpretation of copyright law

My opinion: I think using copyrighted data to train models for sure seems classically illegal. Despite that, Humans can read a book, get inspiration, and write a new book and not be litigated against. When I look at the litany of derivative fantasy novels, it's obvious they're not all fully independent works.

Since AI is and will continue to be so useful and transformative, I think we just need to acknowledge that our laws did not accomodate this use-case, then we should change them.

Pirating movies is also useful, because I can watch movies without paying on devices that apps and accounts don't work on.

That doesn't make piracy legal, even though I get a lot of use out of it.

Also, a person isn't a computer so the "but I can read a book and get inspired" argument is complete nonsense.