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Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

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Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#221

Post by Paradigma11 »

klabb3 wrote: post #193
Paradigma11 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A machine is just a tool. It is the creator and the user of the machine that has the privileges he uses the tool with. I think we should be careful not to anthropomorphize, attribute agency, responsibility and autonomy to something that is essential a better photoshop plugin.

I don’t think parent anthropomorphizing anything. The ones who anthropomorphize are saying that machines should be covered by fair use, because they have similarities with humans. This is not about the rights of a machine but about how one human product is consumed by another human product. This is just a commercial supply chain: if you make a model, you need human data. You generally need to compensate your supplier…

Its not the tool that is covered by fair use. It is the creation of the tool that is covered by fair use.

Is the tool itself supposed to be a copyright violation or is it a tool facilitating copyright violation by producing violating output?

The later is something that can be tested because we have processes to compare works of art for it. If it is shown that LLMs produce mostly infringing art then we can and should ban or heavily regulate them. If not then not.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#222

Post by JamesBarney »

rickmode wrote: post #14

I believe we first need to answer the question of whether the copyright of the AI model’s source text or images affects the output. My opinion — and note I’m a software engineer, not a lawyer — is that an AI, being a statistical model and not generally intelligent, should not be allowed to disregard the copyright of its source material. This would, I think, require the AI’s creator to secure a license for all of its…

My opinion is we should treat AI like photoshop/word/windows. If you use windows to copy a file and distribute it, Microsoft isn't liable you are. If you use word to type up a book and sell it, you're responsible.

Same with a statistical model, if you general a copyrighted work and distribute it you are responsible. But the tool (GPT-4) maker isn't responsible just like Adobe isn't responsible for copyright infringement.

The copyrighted text/image isn't generated until you ask it to. Your prompt is what reproduces the material.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#223

Post by JamesBarney »

skydhash wrote: post #189
chii wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can do it, but I cannot claim ownership over the characters. of course not. But you can claim ownership if you don't call those characters their original names, and make sufficient changes to the design (how sufficient is determined by a court of law - thus expenses). > DC or Marvel if I try to do this at scale. The show 'invincible'[1] has a character that is a basic copy of superman. And yet, you will find that…

> make sufficient changes to the design I think that’s one of the issue. The transformation done by these tools are mechanical. Even if it may be extensive. The human input is too small. Omniman may have similarities with Superman, but he is not him in the larger context of the story. LLMs can not yet be that consistent for marketable output that deserves to be copyrightable. I’m perfectly fine for LLMs to aid with s…

Why shouldn't a prompt output be copyrightable?

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#224

Post by mjan22640 »

meowkit wrote: post #56
rickmode wrote: post #14

I believe we first need to answer the question of whether the copyright of the AI model’s source text or images affects the output. My opinion — and note I’m a software engineer, not a lawyer — is that an AI, being a statistical model and not generally intelligent, should not be allowed to disregard the copyright of its source material. This would, I think, require the AI’s creator to secure a license for all of its…

My opinion as a SWE who is dating a lawyer (joke, not a serious qualification but it does provide some insight): Generative models traverse and interpolate high dimensional state spaces. These state spaces are created from input data. I would argue people do the exact same thing - the first main difference is we can use novel inputs (e.g. we can use images or words to develop our music/temporal state spaces and vice…

The value of copyright is going to vanish. There is enough public domain material to train models on and to avoid the problem altogether.

There used to be professions like tinkerers, bards, clowns. The tinkerers disappeared when the society became modern. The clowns on the other hand managed to lobby for laws that put people into jail for heinous crimes like copying pictures, and survived longer. They are going to bite the dust now.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#225

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

mr_toad wrote: post #191
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #61

Terms of Use You are prohibited from using the content of this site in "large language models" or any other usage for the purpose of "artificial intelligence". Liquidated Damages

It wouldn’t stop them arguing fair use. You can’t have a license that restricts fair use because fair use doesn’t require a license.

https://www.authorsalliance.org/2023/02/23/fair-use-week-202...

Of course, alleging copyright infringment is useful to get into federal court as contracts are generally governed by state law.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#226

Post by JamesBarney »

skydhash wrote: post #127
Natsu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with this is that artists learn by studying other artists, cutting that off because it's AI rather than focusing on whether the resulting work is derivative, seems more of a problem to me. It seems to me that an AI can be used for either original work or derivatives, proving that you can get derivatives out of it has always struck me as no different than commissioning a copy of someone's work from a human…

You can ask someone to produce a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse, but good luck using it in any commercial activities. Most LLMs are just profiteering from people’s labor without their consent. And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works.

> And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works.

I don't think you can define those terms such that what you say is true of AI but not true of people.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#227

Post by lewhoo »

rickmode wrote: post #14

I believe we first need to answer the question of whether the copyright of the AI model’s source text or images affects the output. My opinion — and note I’m a software engineer, not a lawyer — is that an AI, being a statistical model and not generally intelligent, should not be allowed to disregard the copyright of its source material. This would, I think, require the AI’s creator to secure a license for all of its…

I think you are right. People argue if LLM's store or maybe generalize. I propose an experiment for anyone interested. Try and do this prompt multiple times and change the appropriate verse numbers:

> Provide quote from King James' Bible Genesis :25-31

or

> Provide quote from King James' Bible Genesis :1-25

or whatever you fancy.

I didn't go through the whole Bible, but I got pretty much a verbatim chapter. I argue that you can't do this with copyrighted books only because of guardrails and not chatgpt's lack of capability so the information is there, and it's verbatim. Plus other books don't have such nifty indexing.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#228

Post by rmbyrro »

rickmode wrote: post #14

I believe we first need to answer the question of whether the copyright of the AI model’s source text or images affects the output. My opinion — and note I’m a software engineer, not a lawyer — is that an AI, being a statistical model and not generally intelligent, should not be allowed to disregard the copyright of its source material. This would, I think, require the AI’s creator to secure a license for all of its…

AI is taking work away from lawyers, and instantly creating more work for lawyers.

Ain't that interesting to reflect upon?

I speculate there is a hidden force in the universe, something physicists are yet to identify, which mandates: "they shall always have something to do".

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#229

Post by JamesBarney »

paxys wrote: post #106

I have never understood the fair use argument when it comes to training data. I publish a copyrighted article. Some LLM ingests it without permission, but since the output of that LLM is sufficiently different from my source article there is no violation. I publish copyrighted code. Some company decides to consume it without purchasing a license. The product they distribute is vastly different from my code itself, bu…

> I publish copyrighted code. Some company decides to consume it without purchasing a license. The product they distribute is vastly different from my code itself, but I can still sue them into oblivion.

No you can't. If a company reads your copyrighted code, then writes up a spec and sends it to another team that writes up code that accomplishes what you did, that doesn't violate copyright and you wouldn't be able to sue them into oblivion.

Re: Artificial Intelligence and Copyright: Request for comments

#230

Post by Natsu »

skydhash wrote: post #127
Natsu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My problem with this is that artists learn by studying other artists, cutting that off because it's AI rather than focusing on whether the resulting work is derivative, seems more of a problem to me. It seems to me that an AI can be used for either original work or derivatives, proving that you can get derivatives out of it has always struck me as no different than commissioning a copy of someone's work from a human…

You can ask someone to produce a pin-up version of Minnie Mouse, but good luck using it in any commercial activities. Most LLMs are just profiteering from people’s labor without their consent. And there’s nothing new being produced. It’s always a statistical output of previous works.

I think you're misunderstanding that, I don't expect it in either case, I'm saying you have to judge the output not the input. So even if it trained on a ton of copyrighted artwork, if the output isn't a ripoff of something in the training data, I don't think there should be any copyright issues.
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