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

Extracting AI models from mobile apps

altayakkus.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 250 posts

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#41

Post by cabalamat »

ANewFormation wrote: post #34
echelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI models are intellectual property If companies train on data they don't own and expect to own their model weights, that's hypocritical. Model weights shouldn't be copyrightable if the training data was pilfered. But this hasn't been tested because models are locked away in data centers as trade secrets. There's no opportunity to observe or copy them outside of using their outputs as synthetic data. On that subjec…

Now that you mention it, I'm quite surprised that none of the typical fanatical IP lawsuiters had sued arguing (reasonably I think) that the output of the LLMs is strongly suggestive that they have been trained on copyrighted materials. Get the lawsuit to discovery, and those data centers become fair game. Perhaps 'strongly suggestive' isn't enough.

> strongly suggestive that they have been trained on copyrighted materials

Given that everything -- including this comment -- is copyrighted unless it is (1) old or (2) deliberately put into the public domain, this is almost certainly true.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#43

Post by dragonwriter »

echelon wrote: post #18
Lerc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure if event the first part is true. Has it been determined if AI models are intellectual property? Machine generated content may not be copyrightable. It isn't just the output of generative AI that falls under this, the models themselves are. Can you copyright a set of coefficients for a formula? In the sense of a JPEG it would be considered that the image being reproduced is the thing that has the cop…

> AI models are intellectual property If companies train on data they don't own and expect to own their model weights, that's hypocritical. Model weights shouldn't be copyrightable if the training data was pilfered. But this hasn't been tested because models are locked away in data centers as trade secrets. There's no opportunity to observe or copy them outside of using their outputs as synthetic data. On that subjec…

> If companies train on data they don't own and expect to own their model weights, that's hypocritical.

Its not hypocritical to follow a line of legal analysis whoch holds that copying material in the course of training AI on it is outside the scope of copyright protection (as, e.g., fair use in the US), but that the model weights resulting from the training are protected by copyright.

It maybe wrong, and it may be convenient for the interests of the firms involved, but it is not self-inconsistent in the way required for it to be hypocrisy.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#44

Post by boothby »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #27
boothby wrote: post #25

If I understand the position of major players in this field, downloading models in bulk and training a ML model on that corpus shouldn't violate anybody's IP.

IANAL But, this is not true it would be a piece of the software. If there is a copyright on the app itself it would extend to the model. Even models have licenses for example LLAMA is release under this license [1] [1] https://github.com/meta-llama/llama/blob/main/LICENSE

LLMs are trained on works -- software, graphics and text -- covered by my copyright. What's the difference?

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#45

Post by dragonwriter »

ANewFormation wrote: post #34
echelon wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI models are intellectual property If companies train on data they don't own and expect to own their model weights, that's hypocritical. Model weights shouldn't be copyrightable if the training data was pilfered. But this hasn't been tested because models are locked away in data centers as trade secrets. There's no opportunity to observe or copy them outside of using their outputs as synthetic data. On that subjec…

Now that you mention it, I'm quite surprised that none of the typical fanatical IP lawsuiters had sued arguing (reasonably I think) that the output of the LLMs is strongly suggestive that they have been trained on copyrighted materials. Get the lawsuit to discovery, and those data centers become fair game. Perhaps 'strongly suggestive' isn't enough.

> Now that you mention it, I'm quite surprised that none of the typical fanatical IP lawsuiters had sued arguing (reasonably I think) that the output of the LLMs is strongly suggestive that they have been trained on copyrighted materials. Get the lawsuit to discovery, and those data centers become fair game.

No, there have been lawsuits, and the data centers have not been fair game because whether or not the models were trained on copyright-protected works is not generally in dispute. Discovery only applies to evidence relevant to facts in dispute.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#46

Post by bitwize »

nadermx wrote: post #20
jdietrich wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Circumventing a copy-prevention system without a valid exemption is a crime, even if you don't make unlawful copies. Copyright covers the right to make copies, not the right to distribute; "doing what you want with it yourself" may or may not be covered by fair use. Whether or not model weights are copyrightable remains an open question. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/1201

Actually, in terms of copyright control "The Federal Circuit went on to clarify the nature of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The DMCA established causes of action for liability and did not establish a property right. Therefore, circumvention is not infringement in itself."[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamberlain_Group,_Inc._v._S...

Circumvention is not infringement, but the DMCA makes it a separate crime punishable by up to 5 years in prison.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#47

Post by ipsum2 »

This is cool, but only the first part in extracting a ML model for usage. The second part is reverse engineering the tokenizer and input transformations that are needed to before passing the data to the model, and outputting a human readable format.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#48

Post by dragonwriter »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #27
boothby wrote: post #25

If I understand the position of major players in this field, downloading models in bulk and training a ML model on that corpus shouldn't violate anybody's IP.

IANAL But, this is not true it would be a piece of the software. If there is a copyright on the app itself it would extend to the model. Even models have licenses for example LLAMA is release under this license [1] [1] https://github.com/meta-llama/llama/blob/main/LICENSE

The fact that models creators assert that they are protectrd by copyright and offer licenses does not mean:

(1) That they are actually protected by copyright in the first place, or

(2) That the particular act described does not fall into an exception to copyright like fair use, exactly as many model creators assert that the exact same act done with the materials models are trained on does, rendering the restrictions of the license offered moot for that purpose.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#49

Post by baryphonic »

Lerc wrote: post #10
wat10000 wrote: post #4

“ Keep in mind that AI models, like most things, are considered intellectual property. Before using or modifying any extracted models, you need the explicit permission of their owner.” That’s not true, is it? It would be a copyright violation to distribute an extracted model, but you can do what you want with it yourself.

I'm not even sure if event the first part is true. Has it been determined if AI models are intellectual property? Machine generated content may not be copyrightable. It isn't just the output of generative AI that falls under this, the models themselves are. Can you copyright a set of coefficients for a formula? In the sense of a JPEG it would be considered that the image being reproduced is the thing that has the cop…

Going a step further, weights, i.e. coefficients, aren't produced by a person at all – they're produced by machine algorithms. Because a human did not create the weights, the weights have no author. Thus they are ineligible for copyright in the first place and are in the public domain. Whether the model architecture is copyrightable is more of an open question, but I think a solid argument could be that the model architecture is simply a mathematical expression – albeit a complex one –, though Python or other source code is almost certainly copyrighted. But I imagine clean-room methods could avoid problems there, and with much less effort than most software.

IANAL, but I have serious doubts about the applicability of current copyright law to existing AI models. I imagine the courts will decide the same.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#50

Post by rsynnott »

echelon wrote: post #18
Lerc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure if event the first part is true. Has it been determined if AI models are intellectual property? Machine generated content may not be copyrightable. It isn't just the output of generative AI that falls under this, the models themselves are. Can you copyright a set of coefficients for a formula? In the sense of a JPEG it would be considered that the image being reproduced is the thing that has the cop…

> AI models are intellectual property If companies train on data they don't own and expect to own their model weights, that's hypocritical. Model weights shouldn't be copyrightable if the training data was pilfered. But this hasn't been tested because models are locked away in data centers as trade secrets. There's no opportunity to observe or copy them outside of using their outputs as synthetic data. On that subjec…

There are certainly publicly available weights with restrictive licenses (eg some of the StableDiffusion stuff). I’d agree that it’d seem fairly perverse to say “our process for making this by slurping in a ton of copyright content was not copyright theft, but your use of it outside our restrictive license is”, but then I’m not a lawyer.
Post reply on HN