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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 6, 2026

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Sorry I don't understand the polarity of which way you think it will go. You mean anti-AI people will get it their way and govt and pro-AI people will retreat, and refuse to grant "authorship" to AI-generated stuff, where AI-generated is broadly interpreted? Because that takes away the commercial value of AI art, hence AI art-making won't be profitable and hence not done, and hence human artists can keep making money?

Basically, yes. A kind of:

'We acknowledge that our system is a reconstituted blend of totally-not-copyrighted material, and as such we acknowledge that we should not be able to re-claim copyright on the output of that material. You can use our systems to do useful things and make SaaS but not to create XYZ products in competition with humans.'

Obviously this would be a big step down but being a commodity server is better than being bankrupted.

I don't think there's a high chance of this - I agree with you that the most likely scenario is that human input from a sophisticated prompter is deemed sufficient to gain copyright.

That said, I know a LOT of young people who are upset about AI and there's a chance that just explodes at some point.