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Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

knowingmachines.org

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Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#91

Post by _Algernon_ »

scrollaway wrote: post #71
thefz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is similar to saying that if girls don't want to be molested, they should not wear a mini skirt in public. One may not have been aware of the future existence of AI when writing on a public platform. Or one simply may want his blog/thoughts to be intended for human consumption and not to train the latest commercial product which will reap from his content and not share any profit.

How is it similar to that strawman? There is no expectation of privacy in public. That is pretty much the definition. It’s not victim blaming.

I'm free to take pictures of people in public. I'm not free to monetize / share them freely without consent. There is an argument to be made that this should be the case for stuff people post on the internet as well.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#92

Post by ClumsyPilot »

pixl97 wrote: post #12
Retric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complete lack of power or ownership of your work. Do you think anyone consented to have AI companies scrap GitHub etc?

Eh, you borrowed from society to create 'your work' and now you want to lock it up like you've created it wholly.

Absolutely, I am happy to give back to society if AI overlords do the same - make models and datasets opensource.

Kinda hypocritical to infringe on copyright while expecting protection themselves

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#93

Post by FeepingCreature »

godelski wrote: post #88
FeepingCreature wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using someone's information for a purpose they didn't intend is wrong? What? This just seems obviously mistaken. I don't agree with that at all. I'm not even sure how to argue about that. Lots of art, science and technology can be considered as "using someone's information for a purpose they didn't intend." It is extremely normal for people to find new uses for things; information is not exempt from this.

> Using someone's information for a purpose they didn't intend is wrong? What? This just seems obviously mistaken. How? It seems obviously correct. Suppose we trade nudes. You now sell my nudes online without my consent. You bet I have the right to sue you.

I think there's a fundamental difference between information passed in confidence for a specific purpose and information made publically available with an intended range of purposes. I do not believe that the latter is morally protected from unintended use.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#94

Post by XorNot »

j16sdiz wrote: post #89
XorNot wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has enormous trouble getting rid of CSAM. The FBI had databases of content that is decades old - basically images recognised as "classics" that are still shared amongst the consumers of such things. It is illegal to possess, but despite the most aggressive enforcement on the planet it is still out there.

In case of CSAM, the trouble is in how to identify who have a copy of it. In case of personal data in this article, they have already identify which legal entity have it.

> One artist even found that her private medical records containing photos of her facial condition were in LAION, a foundational dataset for many GenAI products.

From the article I'm extremely skeptical people have actually identified anything, since LAION does not store content. LAION is a list of links to content hosted by others, publicly.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#95

Post by danpalmer »

ivalm wrote: post #54
dylan604 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>For most companies “deleting the model” is equivalent to dissolving the company I'm okay with that. It's sad that you're not. If you're willing to start a business on such shady foundations, there's a really good chance your business will continue to make shady decisions in the future. It's better to find and remove the cancer early

I just disagree that it's shady. If you put your personal info into public circulation I think it's absolutely morally fine to have a model train on it.

There's a difference between being in public and being available for public use. Books in a book shop are "in public", but only those out of copyright are available for public use. Similarly, blog posts are in public, but not being given away for anyone to resell or include in their product.

For an image/photography example, I may have my photo taken at an event and sign a release or agree to the event's T&Cs that say they can put publicity photos on their social media or website, but I don't intend that my photo will be used by an unrelated party to generate images of my face (this may not actually be restricted, yet, but I'd prefer it to be and I suspect few would consider it a reasonable outcome).

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#96

Post by DougBTX »

danpalmer wrote: post #95
ivalm wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just disagree that it's shady. If you put your personal info into public circulation I think it's absolutely morally fine to have a model train on it.

There's a difference between being in public and being available for public use. Books in a book shop are "in public", but only those out of copyright are available for public use. Similarly, blog posts are in public, but not being given away for anyone to resell or include in their product. For an image/photography example, I may have my photo taken at an event and sign a release or agree to the event's T&Cs that sa…

> There's a difference between being in public and being available for public use. Books in a book shop are "in public", but only those out of copyright are available for public use

Copying books can be fair use if it is sufficiently transformative, copyright doesn't block all use of copyrighted material. A major case on this was around Google building a search index for books:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,....

Open AI is currently attempting to argue that training a model is more transformative than building a search index, whether they win that argument or not is still to be seen.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#97

Post by TrueDuality »

jprete wrote: post #10

The article weasels out at the end by claiming that companies “may be unable to comply” with requirements to delete personal data. It’s easy to comply - if there’s no other choice then you delete the model and all backups and derivative data that was trained in flagrant violation of the law.

There is currently no law in the US or EU that I'm aware of that consider models trained on PII or copyright data to be considered as including that data. This is the core issue everyone is discussing about copyright around models and whether publicly scraped data is fair use for these purposes.

Until this is decided, likely by a long series of trials in high courts, or passage of law through the appropriate legislative bodies (and then likely after many challenges to it) will GDPR and CCPA be able to apply to these language models.

So no this is not currently a violation of any law.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#98

Post by visarga »

RandomLensman wrote: post #78
visarga wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Machines need to be prompted with the exact prefix to be able to retrieve any copyrighted fragment, and that doesn't work most of the times. So the intent for copyright circumvention is in the prompt. Temperature settings also matter.

That could be besides the point as for the training the machines will create a copy in their memory - or is that no longer the case?

I don't believe transient copies are the real issue here. Having a temporary copy stored locally in memory is more of a technical nuance than anything. That copy remains isolated and is not being distributed or shared. In contrast, using something like BitTorrent actively spreads copies across the internet.

There are also cases where loading copyrighted content is unavoidable in order to even view the license terms. For example, a website could deny the right to copy its content before you even see the licensing details. Temporary copies enabled through normal usage like this should be permissible.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#99

Post by danpalmer »

DougBTX wrote: post #96
danpalmer wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between being in public and being available for public use. Books in a book shop are "in public", but only those out of copyright are available for public use. Similarly, blog posts are in public, but not being given away for anyone to resell or include in their product. For an image/photography example, I may have my photo taken at an event and sign a release or agree to the event's T&Cs that sa…

> There's a difference between being in public and being available for public use. Books in a book shop are "in public", but only those out of copyright are available for public use Copying books can be fair use if it is sufficiently transformative, copyright doesn't block all use of copyrighted material. A major case on this was around Google building a search index for books: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_G…

This is true for some types of transformative work, but aggregating to make money off others work is not generally allowed. I think Open AI are in for a hard time with this when people look at the results and see their work clearly.

Re: Can I remove my personal data from GenAI training datasets?

#100

Post by scrollaway »

godelski wrote: post #87
scrollaway wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it similar to that strawman? There is no expectation of privacy in public. That is pretty much the definition. It’s not victim blaming.

> There is no expectation of privacy in public This is claimed a lot but absolutely not true. Stop repeating this very obviously false statement.

Obviously false? I’m sorry but “private” and “public” are exact opposites to one another. Being “in public” is quite exactly where you don’t have a general expectation of being “in private”.
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