Japan’s government will not enforce copyrights on data used in AI training

I've been wondering why this argument's not been sitting with me, and I think it's for the same reason that the courts have ruled that the FBI needed a warrant to put a tracker on someone's car, as opposed to following someone - the scale of action enabled is the differentiator.

A student learning from other artists is still limited in their output to human-scale - they must physically create the new thing. An AI model is not - the difference between a student learning from an artist and an AI model doing so is the AI model can flood the market with knockoffs at a magnitude the student cannot meet. Similarly, the AI model can simultaneously learn from and mimic the entirety of the art community, where the student has to focus and take time.

If this weren't capitalism - if artists weren't literally reliant on their art to eat, and if the market captured by the AI model didn't inevitably consolidate wealth - then we might be able to ignore that, but we do, and we can't ignore the economic effects when we consider scale like this.

What website is this? Citation needed.

Moreover, a zero shot Eminem might have a vector encoding smaller than the data required to store a fingerprint or small image.

Can you own a few numbers that represent "you"? What if someone reaches those same numbers via vocal impression or simply manually dialing and tuning some knobs and levers?

This brings up the question as to what actually makes us unique.

I'm generally against "AI same as human learning" argument but I don't think you could quite monetize recreated copyrighted arts as an art student. Van Gogh is only okay because the original artist isn't quite around.

People need to understand policy making is not some binary battle between 'billionaires and commoners'. Let me give you the context behind this decision.

1. Japan is horrifically behind in software engineering compared to its neighbours, especially China. This is because of a culture that undervalues software engineers (Who don't tend to thrive in a lifetime employment/de-facto unionised environment)

2. This has started to lead into an existential threat to its entertainment industry. Genshin Impact is the most successful anime-styled game in existence (including in Japan), yet it is made by China. Why? Because China could get top tier students to work on the games, making a mobile game on a technical level that is impossible to match by Japan.

3. Now AI is out, and China is behind US, but still far ahead of Japan. Japan has two choices:

A: Let Chinese companies train their models on all of Japan's cultural outputs (All of anime/manga). Then those companies will both use the models to produce output, and sell the models back to Japanese companies. Making Japan lose by every definition. Most of the top SD anime finetunes are made by Chinese enthusiasts. So this is not a prediction, its already a reality.

B: Go all in on pro-AI policies. Giving Japanese companies legal certainty to start training their own large models. Japanese artists will still suffer losses, but at least the profits stay in Japan.

I should note Japan's artists are also not losing out that much. Anime, despite being extremely popular, is currently in complete production collapse, with even flagship shows having regular unscheduled 'breaks' because of production chaos. This collapse is because of lack of low level animators, who are so poorly paid that no one is joining the profession, and is generally outsourced anyways. AI isn't killing well paid jobs, it is replacing an already unviable job. Japan will still dominate in the higher tiers of production, and won't even need to outsource anything anymore.