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

GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 806 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#391

Post by ianbutler »

naikrovek wrote: post #295
ianbutler wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry it would likely be more correct to say "improperly licensed" code and not proprietary. Still for someone like me, the possibility of having LGPL, or any GPL licensed code generated in their project is a solid no thanks. I know others may think differently but those are toxic licenses to me. Not to mention this code wasn't public so it's kind of moot, having someone's private code be generated into my project is…

Quoted post unavailable.

You said, "don't reproduce code verbatim" as the option. Maybe you should use the actual name of the option if you want people to know what you're talking about. The "with public code blocked" option I am aware of, and is distinctly different from what you said. Don't be a dick, and if you want to be a dick, be right the first time or piss off.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#392

Post by theteapot »

kmeisthax wrote: post #352
rtkwe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think copilot is a clearer copyright violation than any of the stable diffusion projects though because code has a much narrower band of expression than images. It's really easy to look at the output of CoPilot and match it back to the original source and say these are the same. With stable diffusion it's much closer to someone remixing and aping the images than it is reproducing originals. I haven't been following…

The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. Stable Diffusion actually has a similar problem. Certain terms that directly call up a particular famous painting by name - say, the Mona Lisa[0] - will just produce that painting, possibly tiled on top of itself, and it won…

> The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation.

Sounds like MS has devised a massive automated code laundering racket.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#393

Post by joe-collins »

kmeisthax wrote: post #352
rtkwe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think copilot is a clearer copyright violation than any of the stable diffusion projects though because code has a much narrower band of expression than images. It's really easy to look at the output of CoPilot and match it back to the original source and say these are the same. With stable diffusion it's much closer to someone remixing and aping the images than it is reproducing originals. I haven't been following…

The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. Stable Diffusion actually has a similar problem. Certain terms that directly call up a particular famous painting by name - say, the Mona Lisa[0] - will just produce that painting, possibly tiled on top of itself, and it won…

I think that's backwards. The AI doesn't "forget", it never even knew what novelty is in the first place.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#394

Post by lofatdairy »

xani_ wrote: post #374
kmeisthax wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. Stable Diffusion actually has a similar problem. Certain terms that directly call up a particular famous painting by name - say, the Mona Lisa[0] - will just produce that painting, possibly tiled on top of itself, and it won…

> The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. The reason doesn't really matter...

GP is just highlighting why this is so common and often a challenging edge case. If you ask it for something that's exactly in its dataset, the "best" solution that minimizes loss will be that existing code. Thus, it's somewhat intrinsic to applying statistical learning to text completion.

This means MS really shouldn't have used copyleft code at all, and really shouldn't be selling copilot in this state, but "luckily" for them, short of a class action suit I don't really see any recourse for the programmers who's work they're reselling.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#395

Post by armchairhacker »

shadowgovt wrote: post #111
ianbutler wrote: post #85

I just tested it myself on a random c file I created in the middle of a rust project I'm working on, it reproduced his full code verbatim from just the function header so clearly it does regurgitate proprietary code unlike some people have said, I do not have his source so co-pilot isn't just using existing context. I've been finding co-pilot really useful but I'll be pausing it for now, and I'm glad I have only been…

Searching for the function names in his libraries, I'm seeing some 32,000 hits. I suspect he has a different problem which (thanks to Microsoft) is now a problem he has to care about: his code probably shows up in one or more repos copy-pasted with improper LGPL attribution. There'd be no way for Copilot to know that had happened, and it would have mixed in the code. (As a side note: understanding why an ML engine ou…

This is exactly what I was thinking. It's still a legal headache for Microsoft but it's not like they're just blatantly ignoring the license

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#396

Post by ironmagma »

cercatrova wrote: post #343
acoustics wrote: post #6

I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…

I often quote this comment regarding AI advances and jobs [0]: > Yes, many of us will turn into cowards when automation starts to touch our work, but that would not prove this sentiment incorrect - only that we're cowards. >> Dude. What the hell kind of anti-life philosophy are you subscribing to that calls "being unhappy about people trying to automate an entire field of human behavior" being a "coward". Geez. >>> B…

It’s not hypocrisy to think some jobs shouldn’t be automated. I don’t teach, but I definitely want human teachers teaching my kin, not AI teachers.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#397

Post by ironmagma »

resonious wrote: post #388
ironmagma wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the license requires attribution and Github is not providing it (which it isn’t), then yes, Github is violating the license.

Right, so who's going to do something about it? People seem to be complaining about it on Twitter but I'm not sure what the expected result is.

Raising awareness is usually a step before a class-action lawsuit.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#398

Post by llimllib »

kmeisthax wrote: post #352
rtkwe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think copilot is a clearer copyright violation than any of the stable diffusion projects though because code has a much narrower band of expression than images. It's really easy to look at the output of CoPilot and match it back to the original source and say these are the same. With stable diffusion it's much closer to someone remixing and aping the images than it is reproducing originals. I haven't been following…

The reason why it's easy to match Copilot results back to the original source is that the users are starting with prompts that match their public code, deliberately to cause prompt regurgitation. Stable Diffusion actually has a similar problem. Certain terms that directly call up a particular famous painting by name - say, the Mona Lisa[0] - will just produce that painting, possibly tiled on top of itself, and it won…

I tried some very simple queries with copilot on random stuff, and tried to trace it back to the source. I was successful about 1/3 of the time.

(Sorry I didn't log my experiment results at the time. None of it was related to work I'd done - I used time adjustment functions if I remember correctly)

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#399

Post by CapsAdmin »

hackerfromthefu wrote: post #371
CapsAdmin wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of like having millions of parameters you can tweak to get to an image. So an image does not really exist in the model. I can imagine Mona Lisa in my head, but it doesn't really "exist" verbatim in my head. It's only an approximation. I believe copilot works the same way (?)

This is just nonsense. It's similar to saying that any digital representation of an image isn't an image just a dataset that represent it. If what you said was any sort of defense every image copyright would never apply to any digital image, because the images can be saved in different resolutions, different file formats, or encoded down. e.g. if a jpeg 'image' was only an image at an exact set of digital bits i coul…

I don't understand what is nonsense, how it works? Your response seems to be for something entirely different.

But anyway, how I see stable diffusion being different is that it's a tool to generate all sorts of images, including copyrighted images.

It's more like a database of *how to* generate images rather than a database *of* images. Maybe there isn't that much of a difference when it comes to copyright law. If you ask an artist to draw a copyrighted image for you, who should be in trouble? I'd say the person asking most of the time, but in this case we argue it's the people behind the pencil or whatever. Why? Because it's too easy? Where does a service like fiver stand here?

So if a tool is able to generate something that looks indistinguishable from some copyrighted artwork, is it infringing on copyright? I can get on board with yes if it was trained on that copyrighted artwork, but otherwise I'm not so sure.

Re: GitHub Copilot, with “public code” blocked, emits my copyrighted code

#400

Post by dragonwriter »

resonious wrote: post #304

Well, here's a question. Is GitHub violating the LGPL by including the code in their copilot data? Or is it Copilot users who end up using the regurgitated code? I guess GitHub is violating it the instant their servers send verbatim snippets like this to developers without the copyright notice. And then the Copilot users are also violating it when (if) they release their code that contains verbatim snippets and no no…

> Is GitHub violating the LGPL by including the code in their copilot data?

If Microsoft’s fair use analysis is correct, not actionably (at least under US law) because it is within the fair use exception to copyright.

> Or is it Copilot users who end up using the regurgitated code?

These aren't exclusive options; either, both, or neither could be true.

Post reply on HN