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The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

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Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#111

Post by myrmidon »

jeremyjh wrote: post #94
myrmidon wrote: post #33

I honestly think that the most extreme take that " any output of an LLM falls under all the copyright of all its training data" is not really defensible, especially when contrasted with human learning, and would be curious to hear conflicting opinions. My view is that copyright in general is a pretty abstract and artificial concept; thus corresponding regulation needs to justifiy itself by being useful , i.e. encoura…

Anyone can very easily avoid training on GPL code. Yes, the model might be not be as strong as one that is trained that way and released under terms of the GPL, but to me that sounds like quite a good outcome if the best models are open source/open weight. Its all about whose outcomes are optimized. Of course, the law generally favors consideration of the outcomes for the massive corporations donating hundreds of mil…

Would it even actually help to go down that road though? IMO the expected outcome would simply be that AI training stalls for a bit while "unencumbered" training material is being collected/built up and you achieve basically nothing in the end, except creating a big ongoing logistical/administrative hassle to keep lawyers/bureaucrats fed.

I think the redistribution effect (towards training material providers) from such an scenario would be marginal at best, especially long-term, and event that might be over-optimistic.

I also dislike that stance because it seems obviously inconsistent to me-- if humans are allowed to train on copyrighted material without their output being generally affected, why not machines?

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#112

Post by 1gn15 »

luqtas wrote: post #104
palata wrote: post #67

Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering. I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes wha…

genuine question: why you are training your model with content that explicitly will have requirements violated if you do?

out of pure spite for hypocritical "hackers"

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#113

Post by 1gn15 »

mongol wrote: post #20
maxloh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my understanding, if the material is publicly available or obtained legally (i.e., not pirated), then training a model with it falls under fair use. Once training is established as fair use, it doesn't really matter if the license is MIT, GPL, or a proprietary one.

> To my understanding, if the material is publicly available or obtained legally (i.e., not pirated), then training a model with it falls under fair use. Is this legally settled?

Yes. There have been multiple court cases affirming fair use.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#114

Post by 1gn15 »

codedokode wrote: post #83
munchler wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that logic, humans would also be prevented from “training” on (i.e. learning from) such code. Hard to see how this could be a valid license.

Bad analogy, probably made up by capitalists to confuse people. ML models cannot and do not learn. "learning" is a name of a process, when model developer downloads pirated material and processes it with an algorithm (computes parameters from it). Also, humans do not need to read million of pirated books to learn to talk. And a human artist doesn't need to steal million pictures to learn to draw.

> And a human artist doesn't need to steal million pictures to learn to draw.

They... do? Not just pictures, but also real life data, which is a lot more data than an average modern ML system has. An average artist has probably seen- stolen millions of pictures from their social media feeds over their lifetime.

Also, claiming to be anti-capitalist while defending one of the most offensive types of private property there is. The whole point of anti-capitalism is being anti private property. And copyright is private property because it gives you power over others. You must be against copyright and be against the concept of "stealing pictures" if you are to be an anti-capitalist.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#115

Post by ndiddy »

uyzstvqs wrote: post #103

Training is not redistribution. It's the exact same as you as a person learning to program from proprietary secret code, and then writing your own original code independently. Even if you repeat patterns and methods you've picked up from that proprietary learning material, it is by no means redistribution. The practical differentiator here is that you do not access the proprietary material during the creation of your…

> Training is not redistribution. It's the exact same as you as a person learning to program from proprietary secret code, and then writing your own original code independently.

Well the difference is that copyright law applies to work fixed in a tangible medium of expression. This covers i.e. model weights on a hard drive but not the human brain. If the model is able to reproduce others’ work verbatim (like the example the article brings up of the song lyrics) then under copyright law that’s unauthorized reproduction. It doesn’t matter that the data is expressed via probabilistic weights because due to past lobbying/lawsuits by the software industry to get compiled binary code covered by copyright, reproduction can include copies that aren’t directly human readable.

> If the material is publicly accessible without protection, you have no reasonable expectation to exclusive control over its use.

There’s over 20 years of successful GPL infringement lawsuits over unlicensed use of publicly available GPL code that disagrees with this point.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#116

Post by mixedbit »

WithinReason wrote: post #99
mixedbit wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before LLMs programmers had pretty good intuition what GPL license allowed for. It is of course clear that you cannot release a closed source program with GPL code integrated into it. I think it was also quite clear, that you cannot legally incorporate GPL code into such a program, by making changes here and there, renaming some stuff, and moving things around, but this is pretty much what LLMs are doing. When humans…

> this is pretty much what LLMs are doing I think this is the part where we disagree. Have you used LLMs, or is this based on something you read?

Do you honestly believe there are people on this board who haven't used LLMs? Ridiculing someone you disagree with is a poor way to make an argument.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#117

Post by Orygin »

amszmidt wrote: post #108
Orygin wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may convey a work based on the Program, or the modifications to produce it from the Program, in the form of source code under the terms of section 4, provided that you also meet all of these conditions: "A work based on the program" can be defined to include AI models (just define it, it's your contract). "All of these conditions" can include conveying the AI model in an open source license. I'm not restricting…

I think maybe you're mixing up distribution and running a program, at least taking your initial comment into account, "if you train/run/use a model, it must be open source".

I should have been more precise: "If you train and distribute an AI model on this work, it must use the same license as the work".

Using AGPL as the base instead of GPL (where network access is distribution), any user of the software will have the rights to the source code of the AI model and weights.

My goal is not to impose more restrictions to the AI maker, but to guarantee rights to the user of software that was trained on my open source code.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#118

Post by ForHackernews »

palata wrote: post #67

Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering. I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes wha…

https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2024/01/19/fypm

Anything you produce will be consumed and regurgitated by the machine. It's a personal question for everyone whether you choose to keep providing grist for their mills.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#119

Post by hananova »

pessimizer wrote: post #84
NiloCK wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not crazy - there's a rational self-interest in doing this. But I'm not certain that the relevant players have the same consequence-fearing mindset that you do, and to be honest they're probably right. The theft is too great to calculate the consequences, and by the time it's settled, what are you gonna do - turn off Forster's machine? I hope you're right in at least some cases!

> by the time it's settled Why would the GPL settle? Even more, who is authorized to settle for every author who used the GPL? If the courts decided in favor of the GPL, which I think would be likely just because of the age and pervasiveness of the GPL, they'd actually have to lobby Congress to write an exception to copyright rules for AI. A large part of the infrastructure of the world is built on the GPL, and the p…

I think they meant "settled" as in "resolved."

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#120

Post by ACCount37 »

palata wrote: post #67

Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? Like if there is no way to trace it back to the original material, does it make sense to regulate it? Not that I like the idea, just wondering. I have been thinking for a while that LLMs are copyright-laundering machines, and I am not sure if there is anything we can do about it other than accepting that it fundamentally changes wha…

You need low level access to the AI in question, and a lot of compute, but for most AI types, you can infer whether a given data fragment was in the training set.

It's much easier to do that for the data that was repeated many times across the dataset. Many pieces of GPL software are likely to fall under that.

Now, would that be enough to put the entire AI under GPL? I doubt it.

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