The argument of the AI megacorps is that generated work is not "derivative" and therefore doesn't fall interact with the original authors copyright. They have invented a machine that takes in copyrighted works, and from a legal standpoint produces "entirely original" code. No license, be that GPL or otherwise, can do anything about that, because they ultimately rely on the authors copyright to required the licensee to observe the license.
They cannot violate the license, because in their view they have not licensed anything from you.
I think that's horse shit, and a clear violation of the intellectual property rights that are supposed to protect creatives from the business boys, but apparently the stock market must grow.
What makes this whole thing even weirder for me is the similar fact that any output from AI might not enjoy copyright protections. So basically if you can steal software made with AI you can freely resell it.
During the gold rush, it is said, the only people who made money were the ones selling the pickaxes. A"I" companies are ~selling~ renting the pickaxes of today.
(I didn't come up with this quote but I can't find the source now. If anything good comes out of LLMs, it's making me appreciate other people's more and trying to give credit where it's due.)
Wasn't it shovels?
NVidia is a shovel-maker worth a few trillion dollars...
What about the people who sold gold? Didn't they make money?
To be honest, I haven't looked at any statistics but I imagine a tiny few of those looking for gold found any and got rich, the most either didn't find anything, died of illness or exposure or got robbed. I just like the quote as a comparison. Updated the original comment to reflect I haven't checked if it's correct.