“The concerns about potential copyright violations that Reid Southen and I expressed here in and at greater length in the IEEE Spectrum in January 2024 continue almost two years later to be a problem.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
Copyright violation concerns with generative AI remain a problem as of September 2025.
Assessment: Supported Evidence as of
Where and when Gary Marcus wrote it
Marcus on AI, The bad news: AI is going pretty much as I expected, paragraph 6.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment marcus-the-bad-news-ai-is-going-pretty-much-778ec6-a1
We recorded 6 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2025-09-05. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
From the speaker
- concerns about potential copyright violations
- continue almost two years later to be a problem
- Yesterday Warner filed a similar suit
- the problem of wildly derivative outputs
Our interpretation
- The plain reading is that copyright concerns about generated outputs remained a live practical and legal problem, not that a court had finally established infringement.
- The surrounding reference to yesterday's lawsuit anchors the observation to the beginning of September 2025, through publication.
- The target period is September 1–5, 2025. Earlier litigation is context unless evidence establishes its continuing relevance within this period.
Counts as supported if: Active, concrete disputes over potentially infringing generated outputs during the target period, supported by litigation records, rightsholder statements, or documented outputs.
Counts as contradicted if: Reliable evidence that the relevant output problem and associated copyright concerns had been resolved by publication.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Supported
The dated evidence matches what the claim committed to, under the criteria frozen before grading.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
Warner's September 4 lawsuit concerned allegedly infringing generated outputs, and the Motion Picture Association publicly backed enforcement on September 5. That establishes that the concerns remained a concrete problem when Marcus wrote. Midjourney disputed liability and asserted defenses. Those disputes prevent a finding of proven infringement, but they do not negate Marcus's narrower statement about continuing concerns.
Limitations
- A lawsuit establishes a live allegation, not that the defendant infringed.
- Reporting substitutes for the unreadable Warner complaint; a primary industry statement corroborates the dispute.
- The evidence does not quantify the problem across all generative AI systems.
Evidence (3 items)
Supports the claim: Ars Technica,
popular characters
Why it matters here: The report documents Warner's new lawsuit and examples of allegedly infringing generated characters. This establishes a concrete continuing output-related dispute, without establishing the allegations as judicial findings.
- Publisher
- Ars Technica
- Kind of source
- News report
- Describes events of
- Public from
Supports the claim: Motion Picture Association,
efforts to enforce
Why it matters here: The statement expressly responds to Warner's lawsuit against Midjourney. It corroborates that copyright enforcement concerns remained active at publication, though the association represents interested rightsholders.
- Publisher
- Motion Picture Association
- Kind of source
- Company disclosure: the company describing itself, not an independent finding
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: U.S. District Court for the Central District of California; filing by Midjourney,
use of copyrighted works
Why it matters here: Midjourney contested liability and asserted fair-use defenses in the related Disney litigation. This earlier filing is context and cautions against treating the live concerns as already proven infringement.
- Publisher
- U.S. District Court for the Central District of California; filing by Midjourney
- Kind of source
- Regulatory filing
- Describes events of
- Public from
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Marcus on AI, The bad news: AI is going pretty much as I expected
The concerns about potential copyright violations that Reid Southen and I expressed here in and at greater length in the IEEE Spectrum in January 2024 continue almost two years later to be a problem.
- Where
- paragraph 6
- Published
- 2025-09-05
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment marcus-the-bad-news-ai-is-going-pretty-much-778ec6-a1: Current. Outcome: Supported. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.
About assessment marcus-the-bad-news-ai-is-going-pretty-much-778ec6-a1.