Here's something to one about AI:
If it has a choice, if it dies things on it's own, then I will accept it isn't simply copying other works programmed into it.
BUT: AI doesn't choose what it "reads". It doesn't have opinions on what is or is not entertaining. It can't decide what it wants to "write". All it can do is be forcefed input and scramble it into a different output based on exterior commands.
It's like if you put meat, carrots, potatoes, onions and broth in a pot, add in your own blend of seasonings, set the oven to cook it for a certain time at a certain temp, then take it out and say "The oven made a pot roast!"
A very apt analogy and demonstrates the human responsibility in the products of AI. It's a tool. It works at the design, the resources, and directives of humans. It's product, invasive of copyright material or not, is not because AI is an IP thief, it is because the programmers are, and so are the users.
I don't know the details of how AI comes to draw from source material or assemble their work, but when I see an AI produced photo realistic image and I count six fingers on the subject's hand or they are popping up out of the hood of a car or defying some other real world condition, I understand that AI products are likely more unique then Vanilla Ice's
Ice Ice Baby song. By the way, Vanilla Ice ended up buying the rights to
Under Pressure before the case actually went to trial, even though he claimed it was unique enough to qualify as his own creation.
As far as using existing samples of other people's writing, look again at the music industry. Sampling is so common that many artists don't even realize they are doing it. Most of the beats, rhythms, and riffs are built right into their studio software. There are also plenty of examples of public domain writing to model.
https://www.feedbooks.com/catalog/public_domain
These include some of the best examples of Scifi writing there is:
Jules Verne
HG Wells
Mary Shelly
Andre Norton
...
Very few of us come out of the womb ready to write War and Peace with no experiences. No exposure to other written works.
Perhapse a concrete example. Anyone remember this quote? "Mr. Saavik, you go right on quoting regulations."
Have any of you writers ever written a similar statement into one of your stories with this very scene in your heads when you did? Because, I have. My version, and let me highlight "
My" in this statement, is, "You keep spouting safety rules. We all could use the reminders." Not the same at all, yet the same. If I had never heard the Star Trek characters say what they said, I might have still written something similar when the occasion came up in my own writing, but how could I, or anyone else, ever know?
Automation will continue to expand and grow. That's all the current version of AI is, but it will get to a point where it will work itself into an economic hole. Not that the AI cares, but the ones using it will eventually have no customers for their products any more.
Who wants to buy some of my original art? I'm selling, but it seems no one is buying.
-Will