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GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

felixreda.eu

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Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#141

Post by tpmoney »

elpocko wrote: post #55
jeroenhd wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your creative work (the novel algorithms) are protected under normal copyright. Depending on where you live, you may even be able to patent those algorithms. The output of those algorithms isn't a creative work (as you're running a creative work to generate them, not applying any kind of creativity once the program is finished), so it's not protected. Same with generated code. The lines get a bit blurry when you star…

I have an unreleased game that contains thousands of procedurally generated 3d models, textures and sounds. I've worked for years on those algorithms; they are my brushes and my paint. So when (if) I release that game, anyone can just rip the assets, not even apply any transformation, and put them in their own product. I would have to let them do it with no legal recourse. That doesn't seem right.

Rules and algorithms in general (and in the US) are not covered by copyright. The expression of those rules as a creative work is, but the rules themselves are not. To that end, anyone could take your procedures and duplicate the effects of them to release their own game. The combination of those procedures in the specific form of your game is protected, but only to the extent that what is protected isn’t essential to running the procedure. So in its simplest (and most general because law is complex) form, if you release a “game” that uses a deterministic procedure to change individual pixel colors on the screen in response to user input, almost nothing of that is covered under copyright. If your procedure instead places tiles of artwork created by you, those tiles and a game using your procedure to place those tiles in that way is protected, but someone else could replace all your tiles and release their own game with the same procedures.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#142

Post by cdrini »

simion314 wrote: post #136
cdrini wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are a few different ways you can define "memory" and "memorization" here. When folks say "memorising" in the context of AI they mean "Does they AI have chunks of its training data fully/identically inside its neural network". To say "it doesn't memorize" is _not_ the same thing as saying "it has no memory". An AI also learns abstract information devoid from its textual representation. This would be an e…

My point is that bad trained models will remember chunks of the training data, maybe a theoretical perfect model will have no such problem. I suppose you are aware of the case with ChatGPT and Dune’s Litany Against Fear memorization and the lengths OpenAI went to try and prevent the people to reproduce the issue to prove it is happening. If not google it, do you disagree that is not memorization ? That somehow the mo…

At no point did I claim whether they could or could not memorize. I was disagreeing with your statement "How can the AI spit out facts about a metal band if it has no memory". No one has ever said "AI's have no memory" in the way you're using it here.

Yes they _can_ and _do_ sometimes memorize. But they do not _only_ memorize which is what you implied with the statement I've quoted.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#143

Post by zarzavat »

pen2l wrote: post #72
zarzavat wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the output is substantially similar to GPL’d training data it may be infringing. Nobody disputes this. However, copyright isn’t cooties. If the output is not similar, then it is not infringing regardless of how much GPL’d training data was used to generate it.

Suspend all knowledge of copyright law as it exists today for a moment and approach this hypothetical on first principles: a lot of GPL copyleft data is used in the making of an AI tool, that when asked for it, can itself recreate code similar to what was input... also, the creator of that AI tool will reap in all the profits without giving a single penny or even recognition of the value it guzzled from GPL data it w…

Have you used Copilot? It is generally not creating code similar to GPL code, it is creating code similar to the surrounding context file.

Transformers predict the most likely next token, the most likely next token is usually related to the surrounding context.

So yes it can create code similar to GPL code but it can only do that consistently when the GPL code is included in the context. So don’t do that.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#144

Post by simion314 »

cdrini wrote: post #142
simion314 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that bad trained models will remember chunks of the training data, maybe a theoretical perfect model will have no such problem. I suppose you are aware of the case with ChatGPT and Dune’s Litany Against Fear memorization and the lengths OpenAI went to try and prevent the people to reproduce the issue to prove it is happening. If not google it, do you disagree that is not memorization ? That somehow the mo…

At no point did I claim whether they could or could not memorize. I was disagreeing with your statement "How can the AI spit out facts about a metal band if it has no memory". No one has ever said "AI's have no memory" in the way you're using it here. Yes they _can_ and _do_ sometimes memorize. But they do not _only_ memorize which is what you implied with the statement I've quoted.

What I mean is the fact that people claim that we do not understand how LLM or the Image Gen AI work, that there is no memory. So do you support the idea that LLMs like ChatGPT does not plagiurise because they can't memorize or not support that ?

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#145

Post by bayindirh »

bluesign wrote: post #114
mzl wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one was sufficiently inspired by code A when writing code B, then it is a derivate work. This is a core tenet of copyright law. At what measure is one sufficiently inspired for it to be a derivate work? That is up to courts to decide.

yeah the problem here is there is no 'code A' usually, it is more like: 1000s of GPLed code (A1, A2, ... An ) Technically when you get a piece from each, there is no infringement legally. ( as they have all different copyright holders )

From my understanding of a blog post by GitHub last year, they are planning to launch a tool to find similar code to what emitted by CoPilot, implying that CoPilot does not mix multiple sources for a single function, but derives a code block it found with a similar functionality (or maybe bigger blocks with similar functionality, IDK).

If CoPilot indeed derives a function (or a functional block) from a single source, it might plainly violate the license of the repository where it derives the code from.

There are many questions, and nothing is clear cut. The only thing I know is, I will never use that thing.

EDIT: I remembered that people were able to make CoPilot emit their code almost as-is with the correct prompts: https://x.com/docsparse/status/1581461734665367554

So it's not we're taking a bit from n different sources, and generate something with that.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#146

Post by cdrini »

simion314 wrote: post #144
cdrini wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At no point did I claim whether they could or could not memorize. I was disagreeing with your statement "How can the AI spit out facts about a metal band if it has no memory". No one has ever said "AI's have no memory" in the way you're using it here. Yes they _can_ and _do_ sometimes memorize. But they do not _only_ memorize which is what you implied with the statement I've quoted.

What I mean is the fact that people claim that we do not understand how LLM or the Image Gen AI work, that there is no memory. So do you support the idea that LLMs like ChatGPT does not plagiurise because they can't memorize or not support that ?

You did it again, memory != memorization! People don't claim that "there is no memory"; the argument you're trying to make is "people claim LLMs do not memorize". Memory means something completely different. Memory: the ability to remember anything at all in any way; eg "I remember his face but I can't recall his name". Memorization: remembering things _exactly_ as you saw them, usually also implying a lack of understanding; eg "he memorized all the elements of the periodic table for his test".

When people talk about AI and memory, they're not talking about the training phase or training data. When they talk about AI and memorization, they _are_ talking about the training phase and training data.

To answer your question: I _do_ think LLMs can memorize large-ish chunks of text. But: because in normal real world usage they do not output large chunks of their training data verbatim, I don't think there's a sufficient risk of plagiarism to be concerned.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#147

Post by simion314 »

cdrini wrote: post #146
simion314 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I mean is the fact that people claim that we do not understand how LLM or the Image Gen AI work, that there is no memory. So do you support the idea that LLMs like ChatGPT does not plagiurise because they can't memorize or not support that ?

You did it again, memory != memorization! People don't claim that "there is no memory"; the argument you're trying to make is "people claim LLMs do not memorize". Memory means something completely different. Memory: the ability to remember anything at all in any way; eg "I remember his face but I can't recall his name". Memorization: remembering things _exactly_ as you saw them, usually also implying a lack of unders…

Your definitions are very subjective. Seems you define a verb to memorize like not the same as store something in memory , even imperfectly.

I perfectly understand that the LLM developers do not want the LLM to store large chunk of text but the fact that the LLM can pull the text out exactly was proven , so even if we pretend the text was not "memorized" and we use some ridiculous verb like "it was quantum probabilistic ally vectorized" the issue is not fixed. If your LLM can reproduce my poem then it memorized it, AI bullshiters can use other word to cope but I do not give a shit, you need a mathematical proven training algorithm or even better good data to train your LLM to not reproduce copyrighted material. Renaming concepts is bullshit.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#149

Post by cdrini »

simion314 wrote: post #147
cdrini wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did it again, memory != memorization! People don't claim that "there is no memory"; the argument you're trying to make is "people claim LLMs do not memorize". Memory means something completely different. Memory: the ability to remember anything at all in any way; eg "I remember his face but I can't recall his name". Memorization: remembering things _exactly_ as you saw them, usually also implying a lack of unders…

Your definitions are very subjective. Seems you define a verb to memorize like not the same as store something in memory , even imperfectly. I perfectly understand that the LLM developers do not want the LLM to store large chunk of text but the fact that the LLM can pull the text out exactly was proven , so even if we pretend the text was not "memorized" and we use some ridiculous verb like "it was quantum probabilis…

Don't know what your problem is, I'm literally agreeing with you and have said three times now that LLMs can memorize. Good bye.

Re: GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright (2021)

#150

Post by wakawaka28 »

carom wrote: post #20

This is missing the largest argument in my opinion. The weights are the derivative work of the GPL licensed code and should therefore be released under the GPL. I would say these companies release their weights or simply not train on copyleft code. It is truly amazing how many people will shill for these massive corporations that claim they love open source or that their AI is open while they profit off of the violat…

It would make no sense to release the weights under the GPL because machine-generated stuff is uncopyrightable. There should be an argument about the model generating derivative works without attribution as a consequence of how it works. But that machine-generated stuff is also uncopyrightable, even though it might be kept secret.
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