At a minimum it's a big legal gray area. Writing a book review isn't illegal and requires no financial engagement with the publisher, but I can't actually find if SparkNotes or CliffNotes have to pay royalties. Those would be a pretty good parallel in my mind, they are doing more than a quick summary or review and are effectively compressing the content.
It feels wrong to me but that says nothing of the laws we currently have or how a judge would rule on it. Personally if I were on a jury I'd be inclined to side with the NY Times in their case against OpenAI, with the huge caveat that I only know the basic of their case and am not bound to only what's officially evidence.
Yeah, I feel the same re: NY Times. But thats because (iirc) the model was reproducing large parts of their articles word-for-word.
But so long as chatgpt doesn't reproduce any of its sources word for word, I don't think its a problem. Especially since cookbooks have been doing the same thing for centuries.
At least, I think that's where I would draw the line. But I agree - we're in very new territory. Who knows what a judge will think.