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But there are absolutely rules on whether Google -- or anything else -- can use that search index to create a product that competes with the original content creators.
For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc.
Google indexing of copyrighted works was considered "fair use" only because they only offered a few preview pages associated with each work. Google's web page excerpts and image thumbnails are widely believed to pass fair use under the same concept.
Now, let's say Google wants to integrate the content of multiple copyrighted works into an AI, and then give away or sell access to that AI which can spit out the content (paraphrased, in some capacity) of any copyrighted work it's ever seen. You'll even be able to ask it questions, like "What did Jeff Guin say about David Koresh's religious beliefs in his 2023 book, Waco?" and in all likelihood it will cough up a summary of Mr. Guinn's uniquely discovered research and journalism.
I don't think the legal questions there are settled at all.
You just proved my point there is nothing from stopping Google from scanning all those they just have to limit what they show of what they scanned. There it is easy to prove because the content is verbatim.
In the case of ai it is not verbatim. How do you prove the results are directly derived from say reading harry potter vs ingesting a forums worth of content regarding hp? I don't think as a plaintiff u can show damages or that your works were even used... The only reason this is even an issue is because chatgpt creators admitted they scanned books etc.
Mathematically? It's a computer algorithm. Its output is deterministic, and both reproducible and traceable.
Give the AI two copies of its training dataset, one with the copyrighted work, one without it. Now give it the same prompt and compare the outputs.
The difference is the contribution of the copyrighted work.
You mention Harry Potter. In Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc. v. RDR Books, Warner Brothers lawyers argued that a reference encyclopedia for the Harry Potter literary universe was a derivative work. The court disagreed, on the argument that the human authors of the reference book had to perform significant creative work in extracting, summarizing, indexing and organizing the information from JK Rowling's original works.
I wonder if the court would use the same reasoning to defend the work of an AI?