I don’t see how models can be licensed at all. There is no creative element in them.

As you say, you start with a random array and start mutating it until you get something that magically does interesting things.

Sure, you can hold copyright over all the software used to train the thing. And trade secrets or patents around your data selection, training methods, and infrastructure and such.

But unlike typical software compilation, the model isn’t a rote translation of something that has a creative element. Ordinary software has creative source code as input, mechanically processed into an output.

Models start with a bunch of inputs that are not the creative property of the model maker. Those non-creative inputs are not imbued with novel creativity, no matter how advanced the intermediate machinery may be.

By analogy, you may hold a copyright on the layout and creative elements of a phone book, but you have no rights over the actual data of phone numbers. Nor will any amount of ingenious layout engines or ad placement algorithms or complex printing press methods turn those numbers into something that can be licensed.

IANAL. This is truly baffling to me and it seems like everyone is going along with it because some corporate lawyer probably said “Iunno, let’s just say we are licensing this thing before release. Worst case, a court throws out the license”.