Two years after the release of ChatGPT, it may not be surprising that creative work is used without permission to power AI products. Yet the notion remains disturbing to many artists and professionals who feel that their craft and livelihoods are threatened by programs. Transparency is generally low: Tech companies tend not to advertise whose work they use to train their products. The legality of training on copyrighted work also remains an open question. Numerous lawsuits have been brought against tech companies by writers, actors, artists, and publishers alleging that their copyrights have been violated in the AI-training process: As Breaking Bad’s creator, Vince Gilligan, wrote to the U.S. Copyright Office last year, generative AI amounts to “an extraordinarily complex and energy-intensive form of plagiarism.” Tech companies have argued that training AI systems on copyrighted work is “fair use,” but a court has yet to rule on this claim. In the language of copyright law, subtitles are likely considered derivative works, and a court would generally see them as protected by the same rules against copying and distribution as the movies they’re taken from. –Alex Reisner, The Atlantic