That was never not understood. In this context, what's being analogized is the thought process.

As I expressed earlier, what is being said is that the similar thing that is being done is the process of thought, which therefore does imply that machines can think, though it's not a conclusion necessary to make anyone's argument.

I don't see it being advocated that the machines are doing some non-thought-like process where the end result is analogous to what would be produced by a thought-driven process. So I think my statement was fair and wasn't entirely orthogonal.

I also still disagree with Filligree, as I do not think anything about what the LLMs do is akin to my own thought process. I guess I cannot question Filligree's own thought process, but I'm highly skeptical that their thought process is anything like what the LLMs employ and I similarly reject any characterization of the creative process as being like that which is employed by LLMs wherein people just wholly copy something (like a genre or style - and I think this characterization of the creative process is incredibly ignorant and naive) and then iterate away from it. IMO that's a characterization that is a loose fit at the most abstracted scale, and doesn't even come close to being a fair representation of what goes in the creative process (again IMO) in actuality.

I still, as a copyright litigator, do not understand what Ekidd is getting at, and if anything, I think it reflects a misunderstanding of how copyright law is applied (and is also probably based in a false understanding of what LLMs do). There really isn't an issue with genre and style in copyright law (maybe the blurred lines case for the music context, but it's widely recognized as not following the jurisprudence on scene a faire doctrine). To whatever point he seems to be making, I think once again describing this as just copying style and genre is just a tautological end-run around the actual issue that doesn't make an inquisition into what is being done by the LLM to capture the "genre" or "style". As I've pointed out, I think this kind of perspective is reflective of a kind of naivety about how artists create that I often see expressed from technical individuals that do not partake in creative activities such as painting, authoring poetry, writing music, etc, let alone engaging with the centuries of human exploration on what the creative process entails.

To your point, sure, the machine doesn't think. If that's the case, what it is doing cannot be thoughtful. What is happening in the human brain when art is made is thoughtful, imo. I reject the notion that human creativity and art is just some sort of formulaic application of everything that came before it. I see this argument a lot now because it makes sense from the perspective of LLMs and why what they do must be a fair use (because it's inherently not different from that which a human does, which isn't considered infringing). While typically, it is the burden of the claimant to prove copying, here, I think it's a perverse reality wherein LLMs get to say to everyone "show me where they copy" meanwhile, nobody, including the LLMs creators, actually seem to understand how the LLMs use "style" or "genre". As far as I'm concerned, the LLMs can't just hide the needle in the haystack and then say "well we aren't infringing so long as you don't find the needle". To be more clear, when a human goes to a museum and looks at art, or lets say, studies it in university, I don't think what happens in the brain is in any way analogous to what happens when these models are "trained".