Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 599 posts

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#11

Post by getmeinrn »

A more convincing exhibit would have been convincing ChatGPT to output some of the text verbatim, instead of a summary. Here's what I got when I tried:

    I'm sorry for the inconvenience, but as of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, I don't have access to specific external databases, books, or the ability to pull in new information after that date. This means that I can't provide a verbatim quote from Sarah Silverman's book "The Bedwetter" or any other specific text. However, I can generate text based on my training and knowledge up to that point, so feel free to ask me questions about Sarah Silverman or topics related to her work!

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#12

Post by dclowd9901 »

jeffgreco wrote: post #4

I mean I’m no lawyer but this doesn’t strike me as a great example for infringement? Detailed summaries of books sounds like textbook transformative use. Especially in Silverman’s case, reducing her book to “facts” while eliminating artistic elements of her prose make it that much less of a direct substitute for the original work.

Could a suitably prompted LLM repeat, verbatim, the book in its entirety?

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#14

Post by getmeinrn »

georgeoliver wrote: post #9
jeffgreco wrote: post #4

I mean I’m no lawyer but this doesn’t strike me as a great example for infringement? Detailed summaries of books sounds like textbook transformative use. Especially in Silverman’s case, reducing her book to “facts” while eliminating artistic elements of her prose make it that much less of a direct substitute for the original work.

Perhaps not, I thought one of the claims is interesting though, that they illegally acquired some of the dataset. What would be the damages from that, the retail price of the hardcopy?

Wouldn't they first need to prove that OpenAI didn't ingest summaries of the book, and not the book itself?

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#15

Post by akira2501 »

crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is actually quite interesting, as it's drawing a distinction between training material that can be accessed by anybody with a web browser (like anybody's blog), vs. training material that was "illegally-acquired... available in bulk via torrent systems." I don't think there's any reason why this would be a relevant legal distinction in terms of distributing an LLM -- blog authors weren't giving consent either. H…

I'm allowed to make private copies of copywritten works. I'm not allowed to redistribute them. To what extent this is redistribution is not clear. Is there much of difference between this model and a machine, like a VCR, that recreates the original work when I press a button?

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#16

Post by jeffgreco »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #12
jeffgreco wrote: post #4

I mean I’m no lawyer but this doesn’t strike me as a great example for infringement? Detailed summaries of books sounds like textbook transformative use. Especially in Silverman’s case, reducing her book to “facts” while eliminating artistic elements of her prose make it that much less of a direct substitute for the original work.

Could a suitably prompted LLM repeat, verbatim, the book in its entirety?

Perhaps? But certainly not what’s shown here.

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#17

Post by seanmcdirmid »

akira2501 wrote: post #15
crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is actually quite interesting, as it's drawing a distinction between training material that can be accessed by anybody with a web browser (like anybody's blog), vs. training material that was "illegally-acquired... available in bulk via torrent systems." I don't think there's any reason why this would be a relevant legal distinction in terms of distributing an LLM -- blog authors weren't giving consent either. H…

I'm allowed to make private copies of copywritten works. I'm not allowed to redistribute them. To what extent this is redistribution is not clear. Is there much of difference between this model and a machine, like a VCR, that recreates the original work when I press a button?

This would be like you intensely studying the copy written work and then writing things based on the knowledge you obtained from that. Except, we don't know if their is an exception for things learned by people vs. things learned by machines, or if the machines are not really learning but copying instead (or if learning is intrinsically a form of copying?).

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#19

Post by WheatMillington »

akira2501 wrote: post #15
crazygringo wrote: post #6

This is actually quite interesting, as it's drawing a distinction between training material that can be accessed by anybody with a web browser (like anybody's blog), vs. training material that was "illegally-acquired... available in bulk via torrent systems." I don't think there's any reason why this would be a relevant legal distinction in terms of distributing an LLM -- blog authors weren't giving consent either. H…

I'm allowed to make private copies of copywritten works. I'm not allowed to redistribute them. To what extent this is redistribution is not clear. Is there much of difference between this model and a machine, like a VCR, that recreates the original work when I press a button?

It's legal to make a copy of something you own, however it's not legal to make a copy of something illicitly acquired, whether or not there's distribution involved.

Re: Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement

#20

Post by jrm4 »

jeffgreco wrote: post #4

I mean I’m no lawyer but this doesn’t strike me as a great example for infringement? Detailed summaries of books sounds like textbook transformative use. Especially in Silverman’s case, reducing her book to “facts” while eliminating artistic elements of her prose make it that much less of a direct substitute for the original work.

The more I think about it, I think it will (and should) turn on the extent to which "the law" considers the AI's to be more like "people" or more like "machines?" People can read and do research and then spit out something different.

But "feeding the data into a machine" seems like obvious infringement, even if the thing that comes out on the other end isn't exactly the same?

Post reply on HN