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Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

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Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#41

Post by aurizon »

TimPC wrote: post #3

I think the headline is a bit misleading. Mets did pirate the works but may be entitled to use them under fair use. It seems like the authors are setting up for failure by making the case about whether the AI generation hinders the market for books. AI book writing is such a tiny segment what these models do that if needed Meta would simply introduce guard rails to prevent copying the style of an author and continue…

Yes, current AI video/text product is inferior at this time. Youtube is full of all genres of inferior products - at this time! The ramp of improvement is quite steeply pointing upwards. This is retrospective of the days of spinning jennies and knitting/weaving machines that soon made manual products un-economic - that said, excellent craft/art product endured on a smaller scale. AI is also taking a toll on the movie arts, staring at the low end and climbing the same incremental improvement rungs. All the special effects(SFX) are in a similar boat. Prop rentals are hit hard. 100 high res photos of an old Studio Tv camera - all angles/sizes/lighting can be added to an AI prop library and with a green screen insert the prop can manifest as a true object in any aspect. There can be many. It still takes people to cull the hallucinations - a declining problem. Same with actors. They can be patterned after a famous actor - with likeness fees, or created de-novo. All the classic aspects of a studio production suffer the same incremental marginalisation - in 5 years = what will remain? - what new tech will emerge? I feel that many forks will emerge, all fighting for a place in the sun = some will be weeded out, some will flower - but at a very high pace. The old producers/directors/writers - the whole panoply of what makes a major studio will be scattered like dried bread crumbs,

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#42

Post by [deleted] »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

[deleted]

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#43

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

Filligree wrote: post #37
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an LLM model is very different from the original work True, but not the only relevant thing. If the output of the LLM is "not very different from the original work" then the output could be the infringement. Putting a hypercomplex black box between the source work and the plagiarised output does not in itself make it "not infringing". The "LLM output as a service" business is then based on selling something based o…

The output of the LLM is very different from the original, though. It’s hard to look at this and claim it isn’t.

> The output of the LLM is very different from the original, though

I will disagree with that characterisation. IMHO: In some cases no, it's not different, there are clear lines from inputs to output. In some cases yes, it's different from any one input work, it's distributed micro-plagiarism of a huge number of sources. In no case is it original.

But I think that this is legally undecided and won't be decided by you or me, and it is going to be a more interesting and relevant question than "is the LLM model is very like the original work", which it clearly isn't. That's like asking "is this typewriter like this novel?" It can't be, but the words that came out of it could be.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#44

Post by fmblwntr »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

ironically, he was the head lawyer on the legal team for napster (obviously a huge loss) but it accords well with your theory

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#45

Post by lukeschlather »

apercu wrote: post #30
TimPC wrote: post #3

I think the headline is a bit misleading. Mets did pirate the works but may be entitled to use them under fair use. It seems like the authors are setting up for failure by making the case about whether the AI generation hinders the market for books. AI book writing is such a tiny segment what these models do that if needed Meta would simply introduce guard rails to prevent copying the style of an author and continue…

> but may be entitled to use them under fair use. Why? Was it legal for me to download copyrighted songs from Limewire as "fair use" ? Because a few people were made examples of. I'm a musician, so 80% of the music I listen to is for learning so it's fair use, right? ;)

I don't believe anyone was ever penalized for downloading only uploading which seems like a pretty similar principle to what the judge is saying here.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#46

Post by BrawnyBadger53 »

apercu wrote: post #30
TimPC wrote: post #3

I think the headline is a bit misleading. Mets did pirate the works but may be entitled to use them under fair use. It seems like the authors are setting up for failure by making the case about whether the AI generation hinders the market for books. AI book writing is such a tiny segment what these models do that if needed Meta would simply introduce guard rails to prevent copying the style of an author and continue…

> but may be entitled to use them under fair use. Why? Was it legal for me to download copyrighted songs from Limewire as "fair use" ? Because a few people were made examples of. I'm a musician, so 80% of the music I listen to is for learning so it's fair use, right? ;)

If the result of this becomes that substantial remixes and fanfiction can be commercialized without permission from authors then I am happy. This stuff should have been fair use to begin with. Granted it probably already is fair use but because of the way copyright is enforced online it is effectively banned regardless.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#47

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

bgwalter wrote: post #25
ndiddy wrote: post #5

The title for this submission is somewhat misleading. The judge didn't make any sort of ruling, this is just reporting on a pretrial hearing. He also doesn't seem convinced as to how relevant downloading books from LibGen is to the case: > At times, it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose, with [Judge] Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created s…

The RIAA lawyers never had to demonstrate that copying a DVD cratered the sales of their clients. They just got high penalties for infringers almost by default. Now that big capital wants to steal from individuals, big capital wins again. (Unrelatedly, has Boies ever won a high profile lawsuit? I remember him from the Bush/Gore recount issue, where he represented the Democrats.)

If I remember correctly the legal precedent from that era, and if I'm summarizing correctly: Those who served or uploaded were considered to be infringing, since they were "making copies" by serving or uploading, whereas those who downloaded infringing copies were not themselves infringers. Meta in this case is at least described by the latter, and the question is whether LLM generation constitutes the former.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#48

Post by reverendsteveii »

RajT88 wrote: post #12

> “What about the next Taylor Swift?” he asked, arguing that a “relatively unknown artist” whose work was ingested by Meta would likely have their career hampered if the model produced “a billion pop songs” in their style. I have this debate with a friend of mine. He's terrified of AI making all of our jobs obsolete. He's a brilliant musician and programmer both, so he's both enthused and scared. So let's go with the…

counterpoint: Gorillaz is a band specifically designed around the idea that the artist doesn't have to exist in order to do all of the things you mention above. Gorillaz has an image, a style, a mythos, all of that. Granted, when they started at the time (2000) there needed to be human creativity in order to create all of that but with AI everything about this can now be generated. I suspect it won't be long before all of our theorizing goes out the window because someone actually did create an act where everything, the music, the stage show, interviews, looks, all of it, is just AI-generated. That's when we'll get dollar votes on whether AI can actually generate a meaningful musical experience that people want to have.

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#49

Post by [deleted] »

lukeschlather wrote: post #45
apercu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but may be entitled to use them under fair use. Why? Was it legal for me to download copyrighted songs from Limewire as "fair use" ? Because a few people were made examples of. I'm a musician, so 80% of the music I listen to is for learning so it's fair use, right? ;)

I don't believe anyone was ever penalized for downloading only uploading which seems like a pretty similar principle to what the judge is saying here.

[deleted]

Re: Judge said Meta illegally used books to build its AI

#50

Post by Workaccount2 »

Let me make a clarifying statement since people confuse (purposely or just out of ignorance) what violating copyright for AI training can refer to:

1. Training AI on freely available copyright - Ambiguous legality, not really tested in court. AI doesn't actually directly copy the material it trains on, so it's not easy to make this ruling.

2. Circumventing payment to obtain copyright material for training - Unambiguously illegal.

Meta is charged with doing the latter, but it seems the plaintiffs want to also tie in the former.

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