If it isn't illegal, they're gonna do it. Even if it is illegal, some will still do it but but at least there will be a disincentive.
Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent
551–555 of 555 posts
Re: Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent
#552There are two different questions at play here, and we need to be careful what we wish for. The first concern is the most legitimate one: can I stop an LLM from training itself on my data? This should be possible and Perplexity should absolutely make it easy to block them from training. The second concern, though, is can Perplexity do a live web query to my website and present data from my website in a format that th…
AI scraping against permission could allow corporations to formulate a loophole where Congress argues that it's impossible to enforce a law against and that it's easier to just make laws to allow corporations to close-source their websites (yes, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, etc). I think what's most likely to happen is nothing will fundamentally change, and browsers will continue showing page source, and AI will continue scraping source content without permission.
Re: Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent
#553Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what you mean exactly. If Perplexity is actually doing something with your article in-band (e.g. downloading it, processing it, and present that processed article to the user) then they're just breaking the law. I've never used that tool (and don't plan to) so I don't know. If they just embed the content in an iframe or something then there's no issue (but then there's no need or point in scraping). If t…
> If they're just scraping to train then I think you also imply there's no issue. If they're just copying your content (even if the prompt is "Hey Perplexity, summarise this article ") then that's vanilla infringement, whether they lie about their UA or not. Except, it can't possibly be like that - that would kill the Internet as you know it. It makes sense to consider scrapping for purposes of training as infringeme…
This is not accurate, and it would not. As much as I would like it to be the case, you are not free to use public internet content for arbitrary purposes. In general (as you probably know), you rely on the idea that a court would consider your processing fair use.
It's not transformative, it uses the entire work, the work copied is not a summary of facts, and insofar as their is a market at all, it circumvents that market. It fails every test.
(training OTOH is inherently transformative, and I suspect likely to turn out to be a fair use)
Re: Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want summaries from my website, go to my website. I will. Through Perplexity. My lifespan is limited, and I have better ways to spend it than digging out information while you make a buck from making me miserable (otherwise there isn't much reason to complain, other than some anti-AI ideology stance). > I want a way to deny any licence to any third-party user agent that will apply machine learning on my cont…
I addressed this in a different response: I do not care if your browser does local ML or if there is an extension which takes content that you have already downloaded and applies ML on it (as long as the results of the ML on my licensed content are not stored in third party services without respecting my licence). I do care that an agent controlled by a third party (even if it is on your behalf) browses instead of yo…
So if Perplexity ran locally, you would be alright with it?
Re: Perplexity AI is lying about their user agent
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1) If your blog posts are private, why are they on publicly accessible websites? Why not put it behind a paywall of some sort? If I grow apple trees in front of my house and you come and take all apples and then turn up at my doorstep trying to sell me apple juice made from the apples you nicked that doesn't mean you had the right to do it, because I chose not to build a tall fence around my apple trees. Public con…
All of these responses were so quality, there's really no need to add. I Especially like the apple argument about a product in your front yard. You still have no basis to take them from my front yard. If there was the equivalent of what a lot of other sites have (gems, gold, ribbons) I'd give you one. Got a lot of gems, I'll send you an admittedly teeny heliodore, tourmaline, or peridot at cost if you want one. Gemst…
You're both just repeating the "you wouldn't download an apple" argument. In the context of the Internet, you're voluntarily sending the user an apple and expecting them to not do various things to it, which is unreasonable. Nothing is taken. If it were, your website would be completely empty.
Remember, Copying Is Not Theft. Copyright law is just a temporary monopoly meant to economically incentivize you. Nothing more.
BTW, pro-AI countries do differentiate between private and public posts. If it's public, it's legally fair game to train on it. If it's private, you need a license to access it. So it does matter. Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn