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GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

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Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#241

Post by znpy »

tpxl wrote: post #16
acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued. When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded. I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor,…

Well copyright and intellectual property are made-up concepts anyway.

It’s only logical that people twist and bend the rules.

Anyway, this kind of bs will go on until people start bringing companies to court over this.

I still don’t get why don’t lawyers start offering their services for a cut of the damages… there probably is good money to be made by suing companies that put copyright-infringing ai in production.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#242

Post by defasdefbe »

bmitc wrote: post #87

What does > with "public code" blocked mean? Are you able set a setting in GitHub to tell GitHub that you don't want your code used for Copilot training data? Is this an abuse of the license you sign with GitHub, or did they update it at some point to allow your code to be automatically used in Copilot? I'm not crazy about the idea of paying GitHub for them to make money off of my code/data.

> We built a filter to help detect and suppress the rare instances where a GitHub Copilot suggestion contains code that matches public code on GitHub. You have the choice to turn that filter on or off during setup. With the filter on, GitHub Copilot checks code suggestions with its surrounding code for matches or near matches (ignoring whitespace) against public code on GitHub of about 150 characters. If there is a match, the suggestion will not be shown to you. We plan on continuing to evolve this approach and welcome feedback and comment.

From the FAQ https://github.com/features/copilot/

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#243

Post by teawrecks »

acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

When it comes to solving a problem, I want it to emit whatever solves the problem.

When it comes to being an AI that understands coding concepts, I don't want it to regurgitate code verbatim.

When it comes to being a product, I don't want it to plagiarize.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#244

Post by dataflow »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #240
dataflow wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you asked every developer on earth to implement FizzBuzz, how many actually different implementations would you get? Does it matter? If you examined every copyright lawsuit on earth over code, how many of them would actually be over FizzBuzz?

The same rationale applies to any other simple code block, as I elaborated on.

And my point is you don't have lawsuits over one simple code block.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#245

Post by seanwilson »

For DALL-E and Stable Diffusion, the model size is an order of magnitude smaller than the total size of all the training set images? So it's not possible for the model to regurgitate every image in the training set exactly?

For Copilot, is there a similar argument? Or its model is large enough to contain the training set verbatim?

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#246

Post by version_five »

tpxl wrote: post #16
acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued. When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded. I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor,…

You have four examples of using replicable stuff that has been shared publicly, and you call two of them stealing.

All I can take away from this is the absurdity of intellectual property laws in general. I agree with the GP, if people are sharing stuff, it's fair game. If you don't want people using stuff you made, keep it to yourself. Pretending we can apply controls to how freely available info is used is silly anyway

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#247

Post by crazygringo »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #231
crazygringo wrote: post #223

As some other commenters have noted, it seems like the copyrighted code is being copied and pasted into many other codebases (shadowgovt says they found 32,000 hits), which are then (illegally) representing an incorrect license. So obviously the source of the error is one or more third parties, not Microsoft, and it's obviously impossible for Microsoft to be responsible in advance for what other people claim to licen…

> So obviously the source of the error is one or more third parties, not Microsoft, and it's obviously impossible for Microsoft to be responsible in advance for what other people claim to license. No. Look at the insane YouTube copystrike situation. Why shouldn't Microsoft be held to the same standards?

I can't tell what you're arguing. You seem to be suggesting that YouTube is doing insane things, and that therefore... Microsoft should also be doing insane things?

Also a major problem with YouTube is not with DCMA itself, but it how it implements the system to allow for abusive takedowns without repercussions for the abusers.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#248

Post by AmericanChopper »

dataflow wrote: post #244
AmericanChopper wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same rationale applies to any other simple code block, as I elaborated on.

And my point is you don't have lawsuits over one simple code block.

This entire thread is about how copilot committed a copyright violation on a simple code block.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#249

Post by lbotos »

kevingadd wrote: post #229
jzb wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t seen any side by sides that seem like a lift. Any examples? I don’t see Midjourney (et al) as remixes, myself. More like “inspired by.”

Not safe for work, but one example I saw going around: https://twitter.com/ebkim00/status/1579485164442648577 Not sure if this was fed the original image as an input or not. Also seen a couple cases where people explicitly trained a network to imitate an artist's work, like the deceased Kim Jung Gi.

It's really interesting. I suspect the face was inpainted in, or this was a "img2img".

I think over time we are going to see the following:

- If you take say a star wars poster, and inpaint in a trained face over luke's, and sell that to people as a service, you will probably be approached for copyright and trademark infringement.

- If you are doing the above with a satirical take, you might be able to claim fair use.

- If you are using AI as a "collage generator" to smash together a ton of prompts into a "unique" piece, you may be safe from infringement but you are taking a risk as you don't know what % of source material your new work contains. I'd like to imagine if you inpaint in say 20 details with various sub-prompts that you are getting "safer".

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#250

Post by jrm4 »

acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

Again, as a lawyer, I think it's really important to focus on intent. The Constitution gives us "To promote the progress of science and Useful Arts" (which we've expanded.)

So question one in the back of our heads should be "Are we promoting progress here?" That most often means protecting the little guy, and that's why I think it's mostly necessary, and also must be evaluated very skeptically.

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