Public Interest, the True Soul: Copyright's Fair Use Doctrine and the Use of Copyrighted Works to Train Generative AI Tools.

Generative Artificial Intelligence (Al) tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Stable Diffusion are trained using datasets that often include entire copyrighted works. The use of copyrighted works to train these increasingly prominent tools has proven so controversial that a senior executive from one of the most well-known AI firms recently resigned, stating it was "exploitative for AI developers to scrape and use mass amounts of internet data to train their systems without first gaining consent from copyright holders: In this article, I examine these concerns and ultimately conclude that the ingestion of entire copyrighted works for the purpose of training Generative AI tools likely constitutes a transformative use under U.S, copyright's Fair Use Doctrine. In arriving at this conclusion, I first provide a brief overview of current litigation, then introduce case law instructive to the application of fair use to challenges presented by Generative AI tools. Next, I apply that case law to the ingestion of copyrighted works for training Generative AI tools, arguing that such use constitutes a transformative, fair use under U.S. copyright law. Finally, the article ends with optimism, exploring implications for the future of copyright law and outlining the numerous avenues that creators still have to uphold their exclusive rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]