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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

#261

Post by chii »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #239
gruez wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Human learning is materially different from LLM training [...] but the similarities end there. Specifically what "material differences" are there? The only arguments I heard are are around human exceptionalism (eg. "brains are different, because... they just are ok?"), or giving humans a pass because they're not evil corporations.

Humans can generalize. LLMs just predict the statistically-most-likely token.

human brains are just chemical reactions and electrical transmission between neurons too. You're comparing completely different layers of abstraction in your arguments.

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

#262

Post by 1gn15 »

LtWorf wrote: post #206
maxloh wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copyright protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Therefore, an LLM transforming concepts it learned into a response (a new expression) would hardly qualify as copyright infringement in court. This principle is also explicitly declared in US law: > In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, prin…

Recoding a video file doesn't get rid of the copyright therefore doing some automatic processing on a copyrighted material doesn't remove the copyright. The problem is that openai has too much money. But if I did what they are doing I'd get into massive legal troubles.

Not true. You can train on copyrighted material and post the resulting model on HuggingFace, and you won't get into trouble. Pinky promise.

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

#263

Post by chii »

palata wrote: post #61
scotty79 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need a ruling that LLM generated code enters public domain automatically and can't be covered by any license.

But then we would need a way to prove that some code was LLM generated, right? Like if I copy-paste GPL-licenced code, the way you realise that I copy-pasted it is because 1) you can see it and 2) the GPL-licenced code exists. But when code is LLM generated, it is "new". If I claim I wrote it, how would you oppose that?

you could have the inverse - proof that the code was _not_ LLM generated. It's like a mark of origin/country of origin for produce.

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

#264

Post by chii »

pessimizer wrote: post #38
maxloh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A program's output is likely not owned by the program's authors. For example, if you create a document with Microsoft Word, you are the one who owns it, not Microsoft.

Unless the license says otherwise. The fact that Word doesn't (I wouldn't even be sure if that was true, honestly, especially for the online versions) doesn't mean anything. They could start selling a version of Word tomorrow that gives them the right to train from everything you type on your entire computer into any program. Or that requires you to relinquish your rights to your writing and to license it back from M…

> They could start selling a version of Word tomorrow ...

they could, but would anyone agree to this new eula? If they did, then what's the problem?

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

#265

Post by [deleted] »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #253
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now I'm kind of curious if you give an LLM the disassembly of a proprietary firmware blob and tell it to turn it into human-readable source code, how good is it at that? You could probably even train one to do that in particular. Take existing open source code and its assembly representations as training data and then treat it like a language translation task. Use the context to guess what the variable names were bef…

Should be possible. A couple of years ago I used an earlier ChatGPT model to understand and debug some ARM assembly, which I'm not personally very familiar with. I can imagine that a process like what you describe, where a model is trained specifically on .asm / .c file pairs, would be pretty effective.

[deleted]

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

#266

Post by LtWorf »

dragonwriter wrote: post #227
LtWorf wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I read harry potter and randomly rewrite it you think I have a chance against Rowling?

No, almost cerainly it would be practically impossible if you reproduced the entire work , on top of evidence that you had perused it, because it would be very hard to convince a trier of fact that the duplication really was coincidence rather than copying, but it might be a very different story if you had read Harry Potter and then wrote another work that includes the text “Up!” she screeched. (which appears verbati…

And what if I reproduced just a chapter of a few paragraphs?

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

#267

Post by friendzis »

isodev wrote: post #129
friendzis wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Genuine question: if I train my model with copyleft material, how do you prove I did? An inverse of this question is arguably even more relevant: how do you prove that the output of your model is not copyrighted (or otherwise encumbered) material? In other words, even if your model was trained strictly on copyleft material, but properly prompted outputs a copyrighted work is it copyright infringement and if so by w…

> even if your model was trained strictly on copyleft material That's not legal use of the material according to most copyleft licenses. Regardless if you end up trying to reproduce it. It's also quite immoral if technically-strictly-speaking-maybe-not-unlawful.

I have referenced words in the comment I was replying to, you can safely substitute "copyleft" with "public domain" and the argument still stands. Your comment focusing on minutiae of training, however, highlights how relevant the discussion around outputs in particular is.

edit: wording.

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

#269

Post by cryptonector »

WithinReason wrote: post #39
phplovesong wrote: post #25

We need a new license that forbids all training. That is the only way to stop big corporations from doing this.

Wouldn't it be still legal to train on the data due to fair use?

Not if it's an EULA and you make the bot click through an "I agree" button.

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

#270

Post by cryptonector »

raincole wrote: post #160
LtWorf wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need it to be infecting the rest like GPL does.

You probably misunderstood how "infection" of GPL works. (which is very common) If your close-sourced project uses some GPL code, it doesn't automatically put your whole project in public domain or under GPL. It just means you're infringing the right of the code author and they can sue you (for money and stopping using their code, not for making your whole project GPL). In the simplest terms, GPL is: if codebase.is_g…

You can use GPL code in proprietary code. You just can't distribute said proprietary code if you don't also distribute its sources in accordance with the GPL, and that is how the "infection" happens.
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