Yes I guess there's also no such thing as stealing in torrents since the computer "learns" the data and returns it in a transcoded fashion so it's technically not a reproduction. Yes LLMs can reproduce passages from copyrighted works verbatim but that's only because it "learned" it and it's just telling you what it "knows".

The mental calisthenics required to justify this stuff must be exhausting.

I find it more ridiculous to equate the act of a human learning with for-profit AI training without recompense to the authors of the training material.

If I “learned” your essay and handed it in, would you be happy with that?

If there were the case, then imagine having to give it back!

If you can set a copyright trap and an LLM reproduces it I think it's pretty clear cut that it's more than just "learning".

I have seen LLMs do all sorts of crap which was clearly reproduction of training material.

This is also why people are most impressed with how much better it is at reproducing boilerplate rather than, say, imaginative new ideas.

Learning, probably not.

Copy/pasting at scale, yes