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AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

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Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#121

Post by kirse »

jeroenhd wrote: post #105

There's no part of AI that is being swallowed up by copyright. AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works. It's not that hard, various image hosting sites have already added an opt-in/opt-out toggle to their services. Sites might even get away with using this stuff as compensation for free hosting. The fact of the matter is that the AI companies don't want to ask fo…

AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works

Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books? Or observe paintings? Or listen to music? Do you ask for permission when you get new ideas from HN that aren't your own?

Humans are constantly ingesting gobs of "copyrighted" insights that they eventually remix into their own creations without necessarily reimbursing the original source(s) of their creativity.

Time to put the horse back in the barn, cars and trains are here.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#122

Post by Groxx »

sdenton4 wrote: post #110
Groxx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think this is the crux of the issue that people keep glossing over when claiming it's not a true reproduction. Drawing Coca Cola's logo from memory by hand and slapping it on your product is still copyright infringement, even if it isn't an image Coca Cola has ever produced. In that sense it doesn't matter at all if it's AI or human - the production and subsequent distribution for profit of a copyrighted thin…

well, you get five demerits as the coca cola logo is a trademark, covered by a whole other branch of IP law...

Eh, fair enough.

I think the point still stands though. Just mentally replace it with "a random DeviantArt" and it all still applies.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#123

Post by ninjin »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #68
phoe-krk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have an image, then train a neural network on that image, then use the neural network to reconstruct that image in detail, then the NN by definition contains enough information used to reconstruct that image - hence, a copy. With NNs trained on thousands or millions of data entries, this concept becomes fuzzy in the same way as you described - a short summary likely wouldn't be considered a copy, just like a 6…

> to reconstruct that image in detail Pretty much none of these systems "reconstruct an image in detail".

Honestly, can people stop speaking in absolutes regarding these systems? We (researchers and non-researchers alike) are gradually trying to comprehend exactly how much they generalise and memorise, but this is darn hard work and it is not our fault that several major tech giants decided to deploy and profit from these models long before the scientific and legal landscape was clear. Somepalli et al. (2022) [1] for example is a fairly strong argument against your statement above.

[1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.03860

The fact is that these systems are complex, new, and interesting. However, it is not the fault of small-time programmers and artists that modern copyright law is a major, overreaching mess that is now finally greatly affecting what the big corporations want to do. They are getting sued? Cry me a river… Perhaps they will finally stop backing the American-led copyright lobby then?

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#124

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #113
stale2002 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? That's what they did! It was in fair use. So yes, they did have the right to legally train the data on copyrighted images.

> It was in fair use Many artists don't believe this and the law is very much unclear. In many cases the AI generated work literally looks like a clone.

[deleted]

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#125

Post by Animats »

rubinelli wrote: post #26
phoe-krk wrote: post #14

> But the latest and greatest software trend–generative AI–is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law. About time. > If the AI industry is to survive, we need a clear legal rule that neural networks, and the outputs they produce, are not presumed to be copies of the data used to train them. But they are compressed lossy copies of all that data! That's the whole point of noise/denoise functions that neural ne…

De minimis is a longstanding defense in copyright law. If you are copying very little from very many works, as is the case when you turn multiple petabytes into a few gigabytes of neural network weights, you are in the clear. The problem arises when models overfit and spit out almost perfect copies of the training data.

There's a Stable Diffusion example where, having been trained on too many Getty Images pictures stamped with their logo, the system generated new images with Getty Images logos.[1] That's a bit embarrassing. There are code generation examples where copyright notices appeared in the output. A plagiarism detection system to insure that the output is sufficiently different from any single training input ought to be possible.

[1] https://petapixel.com/2023/01/17/getty-images-is-suing-ai-im...

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#127

Post by adrianN »

bamboozled wrote: post #118
adrianN wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an extension of this, only allow children to look at works they purchased publication rights to, lest their creative output becomes influenced by a different person's style.

There is absolutely no comparison here, because children don't charge you to look at their artwork, if you ask nicely, they will probably give it to you for free. Companies using other peoples work without permission to train AI, will charge. Your suggestion would be accurate if we lived in a world where we all shared, and there was no money, and copyright didn't exist, but we don't.

It is my understanding that it makes no legal difference (at least in my country) whether I charge for my work or not when it infringes somebody's copyright. Simply sharing it is sufficient to get into trouble.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#128

Post by how_rude »

henning wrote: post #126

So, all neural network developers, get ready for the lawyers, because they are coming to get you. No, you dullard child. Get ready to get sued if you try to make billions of dollars via derivative works of other creators while breaking software licenses.

How rude.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#129

Post by em3rgent0rdr »

jeroenhd wrote: post #105

There's no part of AI that is being swallowed up by copyright. AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works. It's not that hard, various image hosting sites have already added an opt-in/opt-out toggle to their services. Sites might even get away with using this stuff as compensation for free hosting. The fact of the matter is that the AI companies don't want to ask fo…

Better title: The advancement of AI is being slowed by copyright.

But "eating" is a fun word.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#130

Post by wvenable »

greysphere wrote: post #107
Krasnol wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have an image, then train a neural network on that image, then use the neural network to reconstruct that image in detail I haven't seen that happening since the discussion started. Most of the complains I saw aimed at things like "it stole my style" not "it reproduced my art". Do you have any examples?

It's more, 'this product is profiting from my labor without my consent (ie paying me).' In music you aren't allowed to use the same notes, even if you played them on a trumpet with a swing beat, while the source was on the piano very staccato. While we don't have the same vocabulary for art, it's not unreasonable to expect similar protections.

What you describe for music is already outrageous -- why do you think that needs to be extended to everything?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxepzw/musicians-algorithmic...

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