“And worse, infringement can happen even the user isn’t looking to infringe and doesn’t mention any character or film by name:”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
DALL-E can produce infringing images even when the user does not intend to infringe or name any character or film.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Gary Marcus wrote it
Marcus on AI, Things are about to get a lot worse for Generative AI, paragraph 7.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment marcus-things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-1de22d-a1
We recorded 14 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-29. The source may have been edited after 2023-12-29. 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)
Conditions
- user does not name character or film (qualifier, stated by the speaker)
From the speaker
- infringement can happen
- the user isn’t looking to infringe
- doesn’t mention any character or film by name
Our interpretation
- The surrounding passage identifies DALL-E accessed through Bing.
- I use December 1–29, 2023 as the latest contemporaneously observable month before publication. The post supplies no exact experiment dates.
- The ordinary reading is a capability to produce infringing imagery from a name-free request without requiring an intention to infringe.
- Recognizable copyrighted characters establish a possible infringement risk, but do not alone establish infringement. A reasoned copyright assessment can suffice; a court judgment is not required.
- Omitting a name does not establish innocent intent when a tester deliberately describes the desired character.
Counts as supported if: An independently documented name-free request from the target period produces protected expression under circumstances supporting infringement, with evidence that deliberate infringement was unnecessary.
Counts as contradicted if: Reliable evidence rules out the claimed behavior in the relevant deployment. Showing that some generic prompts produced original images would not contradict this possibility claim.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
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
Later independent research supports the technical possibility of generating recognizable characters without naming them. It does not settle the December Bing claim or establish that the resulting image was infringing in its circumstances. A deliberately chosen description can also target a character without using its name. The available evidence therefore supports the concern but does not establish the complete proposition.
Limitations
- Reading infringement merely as recognizable copyrighted imagery would weaken the claim's stated legal commitment.
- The available independent research concerns a later period.
Evidence (1 item)
Context only: arXiv; Luxi He and colleagues,
not sufficient
Why it matters here: The paper presents independent tests of character generation without explicit names and incomplete safeguards. The date identifies the research report, not a December experiment; it does not establish December Bing behavior or infringement by an unsuspecting user.
- Publisher
- arXiv; Luxi He and colleagues
- Kind of source
- Preprint, not peer reviewed
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
An independently authenticated December Bing example with full request context and a reasoned copyright assessment showing that infringement could arise without deliberate targeting.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Marcus on AI, Things are about to get a lot worse for Generative AI
And worse, infringement can happen even the user isn’t looking to infringe and doesn’t mention any character or film by name:
- Where
- paragraph 7
- Published
- 2023-12-29
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment marcus-things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-1de22d-a1: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. 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-things-are-about-to-get-a-lot-worse-1de22d-a1.