Well, I mean we kinda are, capitalism and all that. There are thousands of authors of Patreon, Kofi, and the like that you can pay to write you the fanfiction you want. Further, if you don’t know the provenance of a fanfic, how do you tell which ones are the copyright violation? The only way to do so is if you have records of its birth, especially as generative AI improves.

I’m not blind to the plight of creators here, but isn’t the issue that a machine can, in theory, out compete the authors at their own style? If a random human can write Stephen King’s style better than Stephen King, it’s forgiven because that took time, effort, and talent, where a machine doing it alarms us. No author has ever been sued because they read a book and were influenced in their writing, unless they outright plagiarized without attributing. I just think that there needs to be a significant frame shift, since artificially limiting generative AI to protect the current business model instead of allowing it to reshape how people produce and consume media isn’t realistic. The issue is figuring out how creators are still compensated for their work.

People are already building small generative AI projects, so there’s no containing it, and it’s only going to grow.