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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

#411

Post by Winsaucerer »

Panoramix wrote: post #281
happymellon wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets called plagiarism, and there are lots of lawsuits preventing this.

It's not plagiarism at all. The AI is trained on 5 billion images yet it stores only 4gb of data. Thus it is impossible that it stores the actual work. For any image that the AI generates, you can't point to any image in the training data that the image is derived from.

How did they train the AI without first storing the data? It's not in the model, but it was used without permission in the pipeline that lead to creating that AI model.

I don't know if that counts as plagiarism, but there's clearly some use of this copyright material that the authors probably didn't envision and did not grant permission for. I have no idea what the law would be in cases like this

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

#412

Post by amelius »

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…

> Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books?

The law already makes many distinctions between humans and machines. For example, looking out the window to see when your neighbor is going to the supermarket: allowed; using a machine-vision system to store the movements of groups of people into a large database: not allowed.

Also, "training the mind" and "training a machine learning system" are two completely different things, even though the language used is the same.

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

#413

Post by avgcorrection »

Say a person makes a program which completely automatically samples songs to eight bit, giving that “retro gaming sound”. Maybe that person uploads an album to YouTube and credits the original album in the description, saying that they do not own this work (the people who made that album do). This seems to be the standard practice for this kind of work.

Will the person be able to monetize that video.

Say a person makes a program which automatically makes a collage of movies with some music on top. The movies will be credited in the video description.

An AI is also a program. First of all, why can’t it credit its inputs? And second of all, should it be allowed to facilitate monetization on behalf of whoever owns the program?

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

#414

Post by CrimsonRain »

lelanthran wrote: post #99
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…

If it really turns out to be a problem then copyright holders are simply going to add in a not-licensed-for-training clause in all their licenses[1]. Sure, existing works already licensed can still be used, but at least both parties (copyright holders and AI trainers) won't have anything to argue about. [1] Anyone from CC reading this? Make it the default.

It is like adding a clause in the license that you are not allowed to read the license.

The moment you share your creation/work to someone/the world, you are training their nn.

You can not share something publicly and then demand "xyz" can not view it. Viewing is training.

You are free to keep your creation under lock & key and only share with nn (of people and/or AI) of your choice.

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

#415

Post by jefftk »

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…

> It's very possible that a judge will rule that AI models do not violate copyright.

Current market odds for that are at 77%: https://manifold.markets/JeffKaufman/will-the-github-copilot...

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

#416

Post by sircastor »

pid-1 wrote: post #244
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…

> Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books? Yes, you do need to buy books, which gives you permission to read them.

Copyright does not grant the right to consume content. It only deals with distribution, whether that is done through a copy, or a derivative.

It is not illegal to read a stolen book, only to steal the book.

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

#418

Post by xwdv »

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…

You don’t need permission.

If you want to prove your data was used to train an AI, the onus is on you to prove it. Good luck.

The AI who follow the law strictly will be at a disadvantage to those that do not.

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

#419

Post by danielbln »

rvz wrote: post #409
hnlmorg wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books? Or observe paintings? Or listen to music? Plenty of people have been successfully sued if their work is too similar to existing content. This isn’t a new concept that AI is throwing into contention, it’s literally just companies trying to side step copyright law because of “disruption”. Source: I work for a company in this field and we do gain…

Exactly. Somehow it is so 'hard' for many AI companies to ask for permission to use and monetize copyrighted images in the training set these days and instead of asking permission, they attempt to bypass copyright law and give out frequent useless excuses from AI bros like: 'but muh fair use tho' , 'oh well genie's out of the bottle it's too late' , 'oops, cat's out of the bag, but you can opt out now' . Little do so…

Can we maybe drop the whole sneery "AI bro" lingo? HN is not the right place for that.[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#420

Post by RandomLensman »

usrbinbash wrote: post #395
RandomLensman wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My examples only were meant illustrate that scale is a well known "thing" in legal systems and I happened to pick things with two illegal endpoints (IANAL). You could look at other things like the need for permits for certain things as a function of size and use, if you want simple examples for scale mattering and legal endpoint(s).

I am no lawyer, so the following is only my opinion. I am completely aware that scale is a "thing" in legal systems. But as I said before: For scale to be important, the unscaled act in itself has to be problematic already.

IANAL, but not sure I necessarily agree I with that. Why then worry about monopolies or cartels? Price setting is just "at scale" there, for example.

Granted, things around power concentration have deep philosophical and social roots.

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