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

One aspect that I feel is ignored by the comments here is the geo-political forces at work. If the US takes the position that LLMs can't use copyrighted work or has to compensate all copyright holders – other countries (e.g. China) will not follow suit. This will mean that US LLM companies will either fall behind or be too expensive. Which means China and other countries will probably surge ahead in AI, at least in terms of how useful the AI is.

That is not to say that we shouldn't do the right thing regardless, but I do think there is a feeling of "who is going to rule the world in the future?" tha underlies governmental decision-making on how much to regulate AI.

Well hell, by that logic average citizens should be able to launder corporate intellectual property because China will never follow suit in adhering to intellectual property law. I'm game if you are.

Isn't that sort of logic precisely why China doesn't adhere to IP law?

Yes, I was being a bit facetious. It was snark intended to point out that corporations don't get to have their cake and eat it too. Either everything is free and there are no boundaries or we live by our own principles.