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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

#161

Post by zone411 »

gene-h wrote: post #119
kragen wrote: post #12

maybe one country or another will outlaw generative ai or ai art or media synthesis or whatever it ends up being called, but presumably they'll be left behind by rapid cultural and technical development in whatever countries don't the cat is out of the bag, the worms are out of the can, the feathers have blown away in the wind these developments seem very likely to be central to programming, all other kinds of engine…

Japan has explicitly amended their copyright code to enable machine learning on copyrighted data.[0] [0] https://storialaw.jp/en/service/bigdata/bigdata-12

Very interesting! This would give Japan a real competitive productivity advantage if ML tools are banned or severely hampered elsewhere. It would also mean that other countries would need to ban not just scraping but also the resulting code or AI-generated media.

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

#162

Post by mshake2 »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #156

AI directly threatens the livelihoods of most white collar workers, most of us here included. Of course they'll use any means available to cobble together a cartel to maintain the human monopoly on production of intellectual and creative works. Now is the best time to do it, thanks to the incredible flashiness and popular awareness of these new bits of software.

>AI directly threatens the livelihoods of most white collar workers, most of us here included.

This reads like an argument from the English Luddites[0]

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite#Birth_of_the_movement

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

#163

Post by ianelbert »

I think that we missed the real problem: it's not a responsability of the Ai model to not i fringe copyright, but is of the Ai user to not publish work that may i fringe copyright, like anything else... If with photoshop (or a pen ) i made a work that can infringe law, is photoshop's (or pen) fault or mine?

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

#164

Post by greysphere »

wvenable wrote: post #130
greysphere wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It takes work to create/identify/classify information, both in the economic and physics sense. That work should be allowed the same protections we do other forms of work.

Your example is one where nearly no work was done, thus it doesn't deserve much value. "Let a = the set of all songs" doesn't help me find new songs I like. A songwriter does that work. Another artist that takes and uses and resells that work (without consent), is stealing that work.

To me it's funny that nearly all the problem with the current team of AI generation would be solved if the model generators simply licensed the content they train on. "But that would cost too much" Ok, just use public domain work, "But that wouldn't be as good" Oh so you are saying the work has value, but you are unwilling to pay for it, and instead your scheme is to just take it. That seems like a good definition of stealing - not paying for something that has value.

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

#165

Post by selestify »

bitwize wrote: post #148
kirse wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 necessar…

> 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. Yes, and humans are being found liable for copyright infringement for doing so. All that's needed to establish liability is access and substantial similarity ; the bar for the latter can be very low indeed (see Williams et al.…

Perhaps the bar is different in different fields. In art, for example, collages are quite legal. And what AI art is doing is way beyond collages.

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

#166

Post by loa_in_ »

jeroenhd wrote: post #152
scheeseman486 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The outcome you want will inevitably lead to entrenched intellectual property holders having an effective monopoly on the best AI tools. You know that Stable Diffusion lawsuit? Go check who the lawyers behind that work for; Disney wants that same outcome.

People who made or bought out the content get to have the content. I don't necessarily see the problem with that except for the ridiculous amount of time copyright remains valid. If a company invests $250 million into an original movie, I don't see why they shouldn't have some say over their content for at least a couple of years. Not until 2150 or whatever the end date for modern works is supposed to be, but give it…

OpenAI is the result of slow and steady progress in ML. It's not even a good product. It is astonishing in itself though.

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

#167

Post by tumult »

kirse wrote: post #121
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 necessar…

Computers aren't human. Software isn't people.

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

#168

Post by microtonal »

ianelbert wrote: post #163

I think that we missed the real problem: it's not a responsability of the Ai model to not i fringe copyright, but is of the Ai user to not publish work that may i fringe copyright, like anything else... If with photoshop (or a pen ) i made a work that can infringe law, is photoshop's (or pen) fault or mine?

it's not a responsability of the Ai model

It's the responsibility of the maker for the AI model. They train the AI model on copyrighted material. So they should clear the licensing for using that material.

IANAL, but since I also work in the ML domain, I tried to find out how this works when you have to follow EU laws. Past rulings [1] have considered 11-word snippets to be a copyright violation (which is by no means the lower bound). So, it is likely that if a copyright holder in the EU can show Co-Pilot or ChatGPT to reproduce a non-trivial fragment of code or sentence, that a copyright holder can sue them successfully.

However, the sad fact is that these models are made by well-funded entities. So, they'll bury small copyright owners in lawyer busywork until they go bankrupt and settle with big copyright holders. So one possible net outcome will be that large entities can do large-scale copyright violation while individuals and small companies can't. We have seen this story before. And it helps to entrench big companies even more.

I hope that the EU comes with some regulation to level the playing field. So either make it illegal for everyone (enforced by EU courts) or legal for everyone.

[1] https://www.theregister.com/2009/07/31/ecj_rules_11_word_sni...

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

#169

Post by bruce343434 »

threeseed wrote: post #109
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.

I have no idea what your point is here. These AI companies are making serious amounts of money (OpenAI is valued in tens of billions) on the back of artists who never gave permission for their work to be used in this way. If a child took an artist's work, copied it and made significant amounts of money from selling it then yes they should be within the purview of copyright law.

AI doesn't copy one to one. It mixes, like humans.

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

#170

Post by hkal_ »

mshake2 wrote: post #162
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #156

AI directly threatens the livelihoods of most white collar workers, most of us here included. Of course they'll use any means available to cobble together a cartel to maintain the human monopoly on production of intellectual and creative works. Now is the best time to do it, thanks to the incredible flashiness and popular awareness of these new bits of software.

>AI directly threatens the livelihoods of most white collar workers, most of us here included. This reads like an argument from the English Luddites[0] 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite#Birth_of_the_movement

Sure, but what happened to the luddites?
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