This is not legal advice, just a random internet stranger’s musings. It is copyright infringement if a judge says it is. Whether a judge says a particular use is an infringement will depend on the facts, changes to the law, and the court and counsel’s understanding of technology.
I’m of the opinion that your hypothetical case is not infringement, and I get there by analogy.
The following are not infringement:
- written analysis of a book
- a review of a book
- doing a Google search for a phrase in the book
- writing a point by point plot synopsis of a book
- hitting ctrl-F on the document
- using a TTS screen reader to read a book
- search engine indexers of content on the web
- archive copies of websites (and books, for that matter).
Copyright, generally speaking, asks the question, “Does the alleged infringement replace the need to purchase the source material?” I don’t think the answer is yes here.
I only do copyright stuff incidentally, so I’m not a copyright expert. I am a high tech attorney, so im well versed in questions of the underlying software. I think the current copyright laws aren’t really structured to address the AI landscape, but as they stand, I think the laws that apply to search engines are a good proxy.