Things are about to get worse for generative AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#171

Post by atq2119 » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

kredd wrote: post #7

Baldbvrhunter wrote: post #2

I imagine the argument might be like this: I hire a session musician to play on my new single, paying him $100. I record the whole session. I ask him to play the opening to "Stairway to Heaven" and he does so. "Well, I can't use that as a sample without paying" "Ok play something like Jimmy Page" "Hmm, still sounds like Stairway to Heaven" "Ok, try and sound less like Stairway to Heaven but in that style" "Great, I'l…

You, because you released the song and took the royalties? I don’t think every type of art can be compared against each other though, as there have been numerous precedents specifically for music, some for paintings, and some for photography with their own nuances. I still think people who are concerned that art related copyright will stifle generative AI should fight copyright laws directly. But that’s a harder pill…

Part of what's interesting here is that generative AI makes it very easy to unknowingly and unintentionally get on the wrong side of copyright law, which is something that wasn't really possible before.

That's something which, IMHO, should be acknowledged by the law.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#172

Post by mrweasel » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:11 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #100

mrweasel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's going to be hard to remove every single "shorthand descriptions of well-known entities" or other prompts that can be used to generate copyrighted or trademarked content. Sure, if you're not deliberately trying to generate infringing content, you can probably remove or discard those results, the trouble is the people who will try to trick the AI to generate this content, blocking those people is going to be impos…

But does this actually matter if the people are only generating images for their own use? Does Photoshop prevent people from making drawings that look like Mickey Mouse? Of course not. I think it will be easy to prevent the obvious copyrighted stuff via the method I mentioned. People going around those restrictions are subject to the same rules as someone drawing the copyrighted image from scratch.

> But does this actually matter if the people are only generating images for their own use?

Arguably that might actually be a very small issue, but what happens when it happens on a larger scale? Disney might not care, they can easily fight you in court if your DALL-E generated comics looks like Mickey Mouse and Nintendo will make sure that your video game about a electrician named Marvin from the Bronx, but who looks a lot like Mario is never going to get featured on Steam. The issue is the smaller artists that might not have the resources to fight AI content in court.

There's also the issue with using LLMs to "white-wash" articles and books. There will be people who will just run articles through ChatGPT and claim that it's AI generated content that was in no way stolen from The Barents Observer. The absolute massive volume, lose in revenue and cost to fight this in court could make running an investigating newspaper impossible and leave us without any actual reporting.

Not thinking ahead and having a plan for copyrighted material was an oversight by the current AI companies, but they are arrogant and just assumed that it would be a detail and anyway "disruption" so screw it. There has been zero consideration to the fact that their product is useless without the previous work of millions of people. My concern is that AI takes over content generation to the point where we actually run out of human generated content to train future AIs on. We need to be incredibly careful about implementing AI and ensure that we do not pollute future training data, but people don't care, because they want profit now.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#173

Post by rmholt » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

quonn wrote: post #160

rmholt wrote: post #148

I feel like the outcome is obvious, there will be a finite list of IPs who's owners have enough money to actually sue, which will get filtered out of the output of publicly available models. They will just slap a detector model on the end of the generator to filter them out. Private models will not care, nor will things change for IP owners with lesser power.

That seems unlikely, unless they settle out of court. And why would the NYT settle like that without receiving a billion? Courts are likely to make generally binding decisions.

Yes, but to enforce those decisions in other cases there would still have to be other lawsuits. And I just don't see that happening on a large enough scale to change the industry

Maybe I'm wrong though

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#174

Post by endisneigh » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

marckrn wrote: post #77

I might be a bit idealistic, but I've always believed that the core purpose of art and publishing should be to influence culture and society, not just to make a heap of money. That's why I feel original work needs its protection, but it should enter the public domain much sooner to fuel creativity and inspiration. We should be thinking in terms of a few years for this transition, not decades.

Why should art be subject to these rules and not everything else?

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#175

Post by rmholt » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

reqo wrote: post #157

rmholt wrote: post #148

I feel like the outcome is obvious, there will be a finite list of IPs who's owners have enough money to actually sue, which will get filtered out of the output of publicly available models. They will just slap a detector model on the end of the generator to filter them out. Private models will not care, nor will things change for IP owners with lesser power.

Many small owners together can bring a class action though

That is true and would break the prediction... here's hoping!

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#176

Post by block_dagger » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

dingnuts wrote: post #154

squidbeak wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a child is instructed to read a copyrighted work at school, which later becomes a factor in his own derivative works, he won't be in breach of copyright. Why should other intelligent entities be prevented from reading copyrighted works and gaining whatever there is to gain from those works the way any human might?

thats irrelevant since an LLM is not an intelligent entity. Whatever you're arguing about is fiction.

ChatGPT is not an intelligent entity? What’s been comprehending and rewriting all my crappy code for several months? An auto-complete? There’s obviously emergent behavior there that is actually defined by the maker and most users as “intelligence.”

Edit: typo

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#177

Post by golol » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:14 PM UTC

AlienRobot wrote: post #149

golol wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This interpretation of copyright only made sense while the transfer and storage of information was tied to physical objects. That time is long and we dont consider it infringement to remember a media or reproduce it at home. Furthermore, we are now entering an era where the production of information is also being untied from physical objects, so it'll only get worse for copyright. I made a post to diacuss this stuff…

I completely disagree. Tech exceptionalism makes no sense. We should be making technology to ensure people have their rights protected, not to come up with technobabble excuses to pretend such rights don't exist. Just because people having been posting memes and reposting pictures and comics with cropped credits and pirating stuff that doesn't mean any of this is legal. Legality isn't about what you can technically d…

But I'm not talking about legality, I'm talking about what we should make the law to be. Just imagine memory implants become commonplace, shouldn't they be allowed to store copyrighted media you have consumed? If not how do you separate between your natural memory and the artificial one? How is it going to work?

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#178

Post by fallingknife » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:16 PM UTC

Intox wrote: post #12

Or... things are about to get worse for copyright holders. I don't see any developped country pressing the brake on AGI in the near future to protect a few copyright holders from getting "stolen" in hypothetic scenarios.

This is not about copyright. Think about it. Would you ever actually use generative AI to pirate something when you could just torrent it? While there may be an argument that generative AI is infringing copyright, it is not really a very good tool for it. And there is a worldwide piracy industry already causing much more financial damage due to infringement.

This is really about replacement. The copyright holders in the content industry aren't really afraid of LLMs infringing on past copyright, but are terrified of it replacing them on future work, and there is absolutely no legal protection from this. The lawsuit might officially be about copyright, but that's just because it is their only available legal angle of attack.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#179

Post by baobabKoodaa » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #136

vimax wrote: post #14

Maybe Disney and the record labels shouldn't be claiming so much of public culture as their own.

If they created it, they own it, why shouldn't they be claiming that?

Record labels aren't generally considered as "creators" of music, although they sometimes are to some extent.

And Disney bought most of its iconic properties, it didn't build them inhouse.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#180

Post by intended » Sat, Dec 30, 2023, 1:19 PM UTC

Intox wrote: post #12

Or... things are about to get worse for copyright holders. I don't see any developped country pressing the brake on AGI in the near future to protect a few copyright holders from getting "stolen" in hypothetic scenarios.

One wishes. The internet we live in is the one shaped by the MPAA and RIAA.

I have nothing against creators, they deserve to get paid.

For what its worth, LLMs are facing the coke vs Pepsi challenge, and sadly they are most definitely Pepsi.