AI and Grand Theft IP

Go to college. Then you can rip people off and get paid for it. It’s called Capitalism.

2026-09-03, by DrFriendlesstechnologymetaAI

This is part 2 of a long rant about AI. Part 1 was posted yesterday, and covered the topic of “what use is generative AI?” in which I came to the conclusion that it was of some use if the responses were always regarded as inaccurate. I know that’s not always how people use AI, but I really nothing valuable to say about people who don’t think critically.

Today’s topic is the great moral question - did the AI companies steal all of the IP in the world, and should they have paid for it? And how does their behaviour reflect upon the users of AI products?

Well, for a start, I’m sure some of my stuff got sucked up in the great IP theft. Here are my Github repositories, in a variety of languages from a number of years. This text will be in there this afternoon, and in time will be sucked up into the belly of the vampire squid.

Am I angry about that? No, I put that stuff there for people to use. (BTW, a friend once downloaded an app which credited my FillerInJava project for providing the AIs for the game. I emailed the developers to tell them how happy I was but they never replied.) But did I expect my code would be taken by dicks like Sam Altmann and Elon Musk? Well, no, but I guess I should have seen that coming. On the other hand there are way too many people I don’t like for that to be a fair criterion.

Artistic people are pretty annoyed about the way their material has been copied, and I can understand that. I am not so concerned that their work has been copied, but more that their style can be copied. To produce work in the style of John Howe or Boris Vallejo, you should have to be John Howe or Boris Vallejo. (Note, I am sooooo showing my age here.) Or maybe you could be someone who trained for years to be able to replicate their skills. It shouldn’t be something that everyone can do for free.

The French comic artist, Boulet, did a wonderful cartoon on creativity. It’s in French so I’ll give a brief summary: Boulet is giving a guest talk to a school class about being a comic artist. When the kids have a turn to draw, they ask what to do and they are told to use their imagination, and gives them a few suggestions. They draw his suggestions. The teacher remarks that the kids have incredible imagination. Boulet gets lost in thought, imagining Peter Pan (the boy who refused to grow up) telling him that adults have lost their imagination. Boulet loses it, and tells him that all childrens’ stories including ‘Peter Pan’ are written by adults, and that in the imaginary world kids are just tourists. Boulet tells Peter that if he wants to contribute to the imaginary world the best thing he could do would be to GROW UP!

The point I get from that comic (and the rest of the book I found it in, “Songe Est Mensonge”, i.e. Dreams are Lies) is that being creative is really hard work. It should not be falsely attributed. On the other hand, everyone learns by copying. The saving grace of humans learning by copying is that it takes years of effort, and by the time someone has achieved some level of ability they probably have their own style. J.M. Barrie probably doesn’t resent Boulet reusing Peter Pan (just say J.M. Barrie was still alive, aged 166), as Boulet has put in the work to be allowed, and the result is plainly a Boulet work rather than J.M. Barrie.

So why is it OK to copy the characters of J.M. Barrie and not the style of Boulet? Peter Pan has passed into the noosphere, so Boulet knows that he can use the Peter Pan character to illustrate a point. And also importantly, no harm is done to J.M. Barrie by it. But is it fair to create content in the style of Richard Scarry (died 1994), or Walt Disney (died 1966)?

I actually don’t know the answers. I would not choose to distribute art in the style of a living artist, and I’m very much against other people doing it. But what I do know is that if Boulet wants to vibe-code something, he is more than welcome to the syntax and style that has been extracted from my Github repository.