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Trump Fires Copyright Official For Standing Up To Imitative AI. And Tariff Implications [1]

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Date: 2025-05-14

On Saturday, Trump fired the head of the Copyright Office. Putting aside the legality of that action, it demonstrates just how deeply bought off Trump is by the imitative AI crowd.

The Copyright Office put out a report about imitative AI, training data, and fair use last month. It did not make any firm recommendations, but it made it clear that at least some uses of imitative AI systems would not fall under fair use doctrine, stating that “… making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries.” Because it is the work of government employees dedicated to the public good and not to a specific company or companies, it does point out that some uses of imitative AI may in fact be fair use — just not the ones, apparently, that promise to replace all writers and artists and movie makers.

The imitative AI people cannot make money if they must pay for the works they have stolen for training purposes. They may not be able to make money at all, as they are failing to do so now even with not being forced to pay for the works they have stolen. Having to do so, they have already admitted, is a death knell to the slight possibility that they can come out of this rich or even break even. It is such an existential crisis that imitative AI bros, like Musk, are publicly arguing for the end to all IP laws (one suspects, however, that software protections will remain in their version of “ending all” IP laws). the only way they could ever make money is either an endless government subsidy, which, given how unreliable these systems are, is unlikely, or by completely replacing at least one human intensive industry — like Hollywood.

I suspect that one of the reasons that imitative AI leadership is so intent on normalizing these plagiarism machines is that the creative arts is one area where people are still considered needed, if not exactly valued. Replacing all those people with imitative AI could represent one market where the cost savings might justify the costs. If you want to be really sneaky, you might even suggest a 100% tariff on movies made outside the United States.

The proposed tariff has a ton of questions, outside of its basic legally. How do you determine if a movie is American made? What if you shoot some on location? What if you employe a British crew while shooting on location? How do you determine what to tax — per play, once on creation, per contract with distributors such as movie theaters and streaming services? What if its shot overseas but edited in the US? What if its shot in the US but the CGI work is done overseas? Imitative AI, if it worked, solves all these questions. You just prompt away and create a whole movie at your desk in your Los Angelos studio building. No more tricky questions!

Now, Trump is a sundowning zombie, so I doubt very much he thought any of that up. And it is still more likely than not that the tariff threats happened because Trump just likes him some tariffs. But is possible that he is translating some discussion about imitative AI and Hollywood and incentives into the only simplified language he can understand, and it does illustrate how far imitative AI companies may need to go to remain afloat.

Imitative AI is probably, even likely, not a sustainable business. The tools are simply too unreliable to replace people or drive a huge increase in productivity. That is true even before you get to the externalities of their environmental costs and the theft they are built upon. Their attempt to force imitative AI into every layer of government and to destroy copyright, and thus creative economy in this country, all stem for the very basic fact that imitative AI is not and likely never can be economically transformative. If they intend to save their phony-baloney jobs, at least until the IPO pays them out, imitative AI leadership needs to keep running forward, hoping that they can stay in the air as long as they don’t look down.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/14/2322137/-Trump-Fires-Copyright-Official-For-Standing-Up-To-Imitative-AI-And-Tariff-Implications?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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