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More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

reuters.com

61–68 of 68 posts

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#61
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC courts have already ruled AI-generated works cannot have copyright. So there is already a legal distinction between a human and a model creating works. I also doubt "humans are just a larger Markov chain than the LLM and they're allowed to" will hold up in court.

I don’t see what eligibility to have works protected has to do with legality of learning. I really hope “copyright can be used to prohibit reading and learning” does not hold up in court. Copyright is, and should be, a protection from unauthorized reproduction. Extending it to protect the abstract ideas would be a disaster. And extending it to control stylistic learning would be even worse.

You are not understanding and making a lot of assumptions isn't a substitute for that.

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#62
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see what eligibility to have works protected has to do with legality of learning. I really hope “copyright can be used to prohibit reading and learning” does not hold up in court. Copyright is, and should be, a protection from unauthorized reproduction. Extending it to protect the abstract ideas would be a disaster. And extending it to control stylistic learning would be even worse.

You are not understanding and making a lot of assumptions isn't a substitute for that.

Hard to argue with that level of reasoning and sourcing.

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can ask ChatGPT about any book contents, you don't need to get the book, and if you don't need to get the book then author got robbed, ClosedAI/MS profited.

The ability to ask people what is contained within a book isn't obviously copyright infringement. Merely summarizing info and attributing it to the source is the basic element of learning, for both machines and human beings. These suits are necessary becsuse it's not clear where the line is, and if ChatGPTs functions actually cross it. What is clear is that OpenAI is doing its best to avoid infringing anyone's copyri…

> The ability to ask people what is contained within a book isn't obviously copyright infringement.

The ability to ask a commercial product is. In fact, feeding the book to that commercial product is already infringement.

ClosedAI is doing squat. The very least they could do is ask authors for permission, and of course if they really cared they would have LLM infer attribution and revenue share with the original creators.

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it appears from your emphasis that you are arguing generally that "originality" and personal authorship are rare in practice, and therefore imply that mixing in training is "mostly not infringement" I disagree with this emphasis, given that rote, repetitive or technical material that is not original authorship is not in peril. Human authors who wrote original creative content, or wrote in a style that is personal and…

> Human authors who wrote original creative content, or wrote in a style that is personal and widely recognized, their rights to trade and commerce are in peril I see what you're saying, but I fail to see how ChatGPT merely copying their style (not: content) might impact "their rights to trade and commerce". Suppose I ask ChatGPT to "tell me some jokes in the style of Louis CK". Would that make me less likely to stre…

> Suppose I ask ChatGPT to "tell me some jokes in the style of Louis CK". Would that make me less likely to stream a Louis CK comedy special?

I think you are thinking too narrowly.

Many or most well-known comedians have people write for them. Those writers are to be out of the job because the results of their work were fed into an LLM and now Louis CK will pay MS for it.

Companies who used to pay skilful writers now will pay MS, who trained its AI on works by those skilful writers without asking them. They are out of the job too.

Repeat for every creative industry.

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#65
post #46
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the tenuous RIAA claim that every pirated piece of media represented a lost sale back when they were suing their customers in the 2000s.

It's been something of a wild ride for me having lived through the "Information wants to be free" era to now live in the new "Reading my publicly published writings and deriving new things from that is theft" era. The next few years of court battles around this are going to be interesting, and I'm not too hopeful on the odds that the "little guy" wins in the end. Seemingly "little guy" affirming results might just tu…

> Reading my publicly published writings and deriving new things from that is theft

Ah, the mental gymnastics people go through to justify the theft.

Just... no. It's nothing about people reading your writings and deriving things from that. It's about big companies using automated tools to ingest your writing and provide commercial services based on it. To other people. Without paying you a dime.

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#66
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can ask ChatGPT about any book contents, you don't need to get the book, and if you don't need to get the book then author got robbed, ClosedAI/MS profited.

Are copyright holders being robbed by professors that answer their students' questions? Don't teachers do the same? - Trained their minds on existing books - Tutor the next generation of students - Give classes on book contents - Answer questions about those books The book publishing industry didn't go out of business because there are teachers answering questions. To the contrary, it benefited book sales, because mo…

> Don't teachers do the same?

> - Trained their minds on existing books

Training a human = enriching conscious human mind. "Training" AI = mechanically creating a derivative work (no conscious mind to enrich). Training a human is the same to "training" AI as killing a human to "killing" a Unix process, same word different things

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can ask ChatGPT about any book contents, you don't need to get the book, and if you don't need to get the book then author got robbed, ClosedAI/MS profited.

If you ask a human questions about a book, thereby avoiding having to buy the book for class, did you rob the author?

> If you ask a human questions about a book, thereby avoiding having to buy the book for class, did you rob the author?

If someone makes a commercial activity of "answering any question about book contents at any time 24/7", hires tons of people to read those books and reply to billions of such questions daily thereby helping everyone not buy any books, is that robbing book authors?

Food for thought.

Re: More writers sue OpenAI for copyright infringement over AI training

#68
post #60

Is there a list of the critters suing AI companies so I can boycott them?

Why would you want to do that?

AI is the next industrial revolution. It will greatly increase human productivity. Anyone standing against it is an enemy of all mankind.
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