Recently a famous actress accused an AI company of using her voice without her permission. She says this company approached her about using her voice as the voice of a new product. She declined the offer.

Now she claims the voice of the product is a dead ringer for her voice and is suing the AI company for using her voice without her permission. What could have happened is that this company could have hired an impersonator and used their voice to develop their product. I think this is the most likely thing that happened.

This sparked an interesting idea in my mind. What LLM are doing is imitating. We all do it all the time. Musicians do it when they write songs. We all do it when we write. We can't help but be influenced by others. Of course there are even professional impersonators. Under current IP "law" I do not believe that an impersonator can be sued for stealing the likeness of those they impersonate. So, given that LLM simply use information/data that is publicly available how can what they are doing be unlawful or even immoral?

Imagine a world like this. I color my hair and cut it in a certain way that is new and different. Does it seem reasonable that I could use the government to prevent anyone else from doing what I have done? Its absurd right? Why? Because a hair style can't be stolen. Its not tangible. It can be copied or imitated though.

This cuts to the core of the logical flaws in idea of intellectual property. Most people really only look at the utility of things like IP instead of reasoning about them. You can make arguments about why IP is needed to protect something but when you really break it down logically it is full of contradictions. It falls apart. Its arbitrary.

If I write something on my own web site on the Internet and do not specify a license legally you are not allowed to duplicate it. Once I publish it though I have zero control over it. Anyone can read it and "steal" it. But they can't really steal it right? I mean, I don't even have possession of it. Anything that can be infinitely copied cannot be stolen. It can be copied. It can be copied and changed. You see theft requires the possession of an object to change. When you copy what I have written here what I wrote does not cease to exist. No matter how much I don't like that the only way this can be stopped is for me to never share it.

The only reason IP even exists is the state. The state arbitrarily decides who has the "right" to ideas and intangible things like songs and prose. And we know how the state enforces things. Violence and the threat of violence.

I am really looking forward to watching all of the absurdities that will come out of AI companies copying and imitating things broadcasted online. Grab the popcorn. Its gonna be fun.