I’m clearly talking about the technology when I say tool (large language models) and not the company itself.

Didn’t you notice you’re on a post about Microsoft Corp and OpenAI Corp? Maybe you ended up in the wrong place by accident.

If we can’t freely use copyrighted material to train, it completely and unequivocally kills any kind of open source or even small to medium model.

Ah, the typical Big Business conservative argument: “think about the business owner… The small business owner!” Always forgetting to add the word “small” until the last possible second.

And, for some reason, only jumping into converse when you must, by necessity, harm much smaller creators in the process. I guess that plays into a second conservative argument, maximizing harm per capita.

Why not simply ask for consent, instead of demanding it as an alleged right?

If someone knows that upon creation of something, it will simply be stolen, that tells them not to create. That’s the foundation upon which copyright law was made, despite the misinformation peddled here by anti-artist ideologues.