>>moose4+(OP)
Good. Reading books is legal. If I own a book and feed it to a program I wrote (and I have done exactly that), it is also legal. There is zero reason this should be any different with an AI.
>>bradle+nt
If you charge me to use your program and it spits out unedited, copyrighted material then it should be illegal. I don't know the details of this case, but that's what's going on in the New York Times case. It's not always so cut and dry.