In our discussions, we went down a rabbit hole about the “commodification of inspiration,” that “worthless” (no commercial value) human-written fan fiction is okay, but published/sold (high commercial value) LLM-created content from copyrighted training data is not okay. While theoretically, it could be possible to track this transference of value – if you can quantify a percentage of LLM influenced by published material as a share of its final market-determined value – in practice, setting up prescriptive laws is unlikely in the United States, where the priority tends to align toward the right of free expression over other concerns such as intellectual property. (Europe tends to side differently.) After-the-fact lawsuits, though still favoring the wealthy who can more easily afford to participate in such matters, let courts decide on a case-by-case basis the merits of transformative use, fair use, satire, parody, and so forth. My groupmates disagreed, but in my reading, “LET THE MACHINES PLAY.”