> As outlined in the lawsuit, the Times alleges OpenAI and Microsoft’s large language models (LLMs), which power ChatGPT and Copilot, “can generate output that recites Times content verbatim
If a person with a very good memory reads an article, they only violate copyright if they write it out and share it, or perform the work publicly. If they have a reasonable understanding of the law they won't do so. However a malicious person could absolutely trick or force them to produce the copyrighted work. The blame in that case however is not on the person who read and recited the article but on the person who tricked them.
That distinction is one we're going to have to codify all over again for AI.
Why? If I steal a bunch of unique works of art and store them in my house for only me to see, am I still committing a crime?
But if you simply copied the unique works and stored them, nobody would care. If you then tried to turn around and sell the copies, well, the artist is probably dead anyway and the art is probably public domain, but if not, then yeah it'd be copyright infringement.
If you only copied tiny parts of the art though, then fair use examinations in a court might come into play. It just depends on whether they decide to sue you, like NYT did in this case, while millions of others did not (or just didn't have the resources to).