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AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

heathermeeker.com

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Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#331

Post by smallerfish »

luxuryballs wrote: post #284
jeroenhd wrote: post #105

There's no part of AI that is being swallowed up by copyright. AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works. It's not that hard, various image hosting sites have already added an opt-in/opt-out toggle to their services. Sites might even get away with using this stuff as compensation for free hosting. The fact of the matter is that the AI companies don't want to ask fo…

How is it much different from a search index? it’s just a new interface to get at some info, rather than Google and Firefox, it already pre-browsed the web for you, and is displaying back the content. If the end user gleans some actual copyrighted work from the search they still need permission to use it, but it’s also likely it’s just a derivative, or the end user is just reading an example and learning from it at c…

It's not displaying back the "content". It's training a model with statistics based on the writing that was either paid for by a site publisher in the hope of earning ad revenue, or contributed to the community for free.

If a model was to add attributions to each of its answers, then perhaps the search engine analogy would hold. But, they don't (and right now, to my understanding, can't.)

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#332

Post by zabzonk »

cycomanic wrote: post #298
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they spit out source code that mirrors individual repositories That's not a problem, we already have copyright laws that prevent people from distributing mirrors of copyrighted works. They don't care about how the works were copied.

So you are saying we should prosecute MS because co-pilot is distributing the copyrighted work? Or in other words why is co-pilot spitting out the code to someone else (often with copyright notices removed), not code distribution?

> So you are saying we should prosecute MS because co-pilot is distributing the copyrighted work?

yes, isn't that what very many people are saying?

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#333

Post by realharo »

jeroenhd wrote: post #105

There's no part of AI that is being swallowed up by copyright. AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works. It's not that hard, various image hosting sites have already added an opt-in/opt-out toggle to their services. Sites might even get away with using this stuff as compensation for free hosting. The fact of the matter is that the AI companies don't want to ask fo…

>It's very possible that a judge will rule that AI models do not violate copyright

Would that mean you can simply use one AI (or more) from anyone else to train another AI?

Of course access can always be limited to an API with rate limits and per-request costs, which would make it difficult to straight up copy the whole thing, but it would be hard to justify any legal protections against it.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#334

Post by i_like_apis »

fsckboy wrote: post #216
kirse wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI companies can ask for permission if they want to train their models on other people's works Do you ask for permission when you train your mind on copyrighted books? Or observe paintings? Or listen to music? Do you ask for permission when you get new ideas from HN that aren't your own? Humans are constantly ingesting gobs of "copyrighted" insights that they eventually remix into their own creations without necessar…

thanks for sending your strawman in to do battle with his strawman. you don't need permission to train on books, but you do need to buy the books or take them from the library one at a time. "training" these machines so far is not like human learning as becomes apparent when they spit out source code that mirrors individual repositories. And you know that humans are required to both remix their own creations and foll…

This “ML learning is not like human learning” fallacy is all over the place lately. It’s stupid, and it should stop.

Humans are capable of both facsimile and imitation.

The fact that ML is able to perform facsimile far better than a human can is not evidence that this is “not the same” learning. Only that ML learning is superior. ML is far superior in feats of both imitation and facsimile.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#335

Post by smallerfish »

dns_snek wrote: post #44

> [...] and also, for software authors, prohibiting ML training would be antithetical to the Open Source Definition. So that probably won’t work. Of course. As an author of OSS, I'm more than happy to let your AI "learn" from my code as long as the trained model is released under a GPL compatible license.

I think this is exactly right, and also applies to any models based on web scraping. If you're scraping the web and building a set of weights based on language or images that people have developed, _fine_ as long as you release the model without charge and/or at cost (given that the cost of model training in this way is still expensive, earning back expenses is reasonable).

Otherwise every word typed and every image uploaded is contributing to the development of products that will increase the power of mega-corps over time.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#336

Post by wnkrshm »

wokwokwok wrote: post #241
usrbinbash wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what the customers of AI people want isn't available under those terms. What the customers of AI want is accurate predictions of the models, and they can get that even if everyone demanding to get removed from the training set would be removed. The makers of generative AI could remove every living artist who wants to from the dataset, the model would still develop a general solution of color theory, composition…

Then do it! I swear when I see this argument because it makes me angry. You’re right, but they didnt , because they were too lazy and cheap to do it that way. …and that’s why people are angry, and rightly so. Fully licensed models are the future, and it’s both irritating and disappointing that we are where we are right now because the people training these models were too lazy to assemble a training dataset that wasn…

This is the only issue I have with generative image models. I'd be using them myself right now but I'm too disgusted by how the sausage is made. Once the first licensed, properly sourced models are out, they will get my money or time.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#337

Post by i_like_apis »

wnkrshm wrote: post #325
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they spit out source code that mirrors individual repositories That's not a problem, we already have copyright laws that prevent people from distributing mirrors of copyrighted works. They don't care about how the works were copied.

It becomes a problem when violating content can be generated faster than it can be discovered and fined.

So copyright law should be rewritten? It doesn’t follow.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#338

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

wnkrshm wrote: post #325
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they spit out source code that mirrors individual repositories That's not a problem, we already have copyright laws that prevent people from distributing mirrors of copyrighted works. They don't care about how the works were copied.

It becomes a problem when violating content can be generated faster than it can be discovered and fined.

Only if the person generating that content is able to earn greater profit than the fine, before they are stopped.

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#339

Post by wizofaus »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #312
cactusplant7374 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The AI doesn’t understand what it consumes. That is why the models still can’t add two numbers.

What's the difference between acting as if it actually understands and "true understanding". I'd argue there is none, or at least that it doesn't matter. For instance there is nothing you could do to prove to me that you aren't just a black box acting on input in a sophisticated manner (eg. chinese room argument[1]), yet I give you the benefit of the doubt. GPT's lack of understanding of math may be a localized lack…

I'm sure this topic is already the subject of much discussion, but from the sessions I've had with ChatGPT, it's quite obvious it doesn't really "understand" very much in the way humans do. At best it seems to understand what question you want an answer to, but it often fails miserably even in simple cases (try asking it how many letters certain words have, or to give examples of words ending in a particular letter etc.). But sure, eventually it may overcome those cases and make an excellent mimic of an intelligence with understanding. If it's genuinely able to produce output accurately emulating all the sorts of logical reasoning humans can do then it may well be impossible to distinguish it from "the real thing" (whatever that actually is...)

Re: AI is in danger of being swallowed up by copyright law

#340

Post by cpa »

The Stable Diffusion suit alleges copyright infringement, stating that, “The resulting image is necessarily a derivative work, because it is generated exclusively from a combination of the conditioning data and the latent images, all of which are copies of copyrighted images. It is, in short, a 21st-century collage tool.” That characterization is the essence and conclusion of the lawsuit, and one with which many AI designers would disagree.

I didn't expect to be defending copyright law, but the excerpt is ridiculous. It's clear that the images are a product of the prompt and training set. The legal side of fair use and copyrights is best left to the courts, but the real question is how to divide the profits. Because the training dataset is so large and the technology plays such a crucial role, it may not make sense to pay much (if anything) for each individual image in the training set. There's no clear cut answer.

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