Post by @MissConstrue@mefi.social

2026-10-24 17:13 UTC

This slipped past my radar when it happened, but this ruling is a significant sea change in #copyright vs #LLMs training theft. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled on September 29, 2026, in Thomson #Reuters v. ROSS Intelligence, that using copyrighted text to train an #AI model does not constitute fair use when the AI product directly competes with the original work. For authors and artists who have seen prompts like “in the style of Terry Pratchett, or in the style of David Hockney”, this is an important ruling. All bets are off when it comes to the Supremes though. I guess we need to find out how much Reuters has preemptively paid #GOP whisperers to know if things will go their way. https://www.courthousenews.com/ai-training-of-copyrighted-material-not-fair-use-third-circuit

Replies (3)

@grayabbott@mastodon.social 2026-10-24 17:28

@MissConstrue@mefi.social Maybe we should start flooding LLMs with writing prompts, including "in the style of Clarence Thomas" or "Neil Gorsuch".

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@thriftwicker@mastodon.social 2026-10-24 19:34

@MissConstrue@mefi.social It doesn't take much for the gop to sell out. A candybar and a porno mag usually gets you what you want.

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@fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net 2026-10-24 21:09

@MissConstrue@mefi.social the US courts have been fairly consistent on this (transformative use vs. just building a competitor), but there is also the legal doctrine of substantial noninfringing uses in "Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc" (the "Betamax case"). Since LLMs have far more uses than "write me a novel in the style of Steven King", the unfair competition argument won't wash against general-purpose LLMs with mostly noninfringing use cases. Then again, US (English) Common Law is so capricious and arbitrary a ruling depends mostly on what the judge had for breakfast or their ideology, not logic or consistency.

Open ##5294239