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

61–70 of 250 posts

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#61

Post by [deleted] »

jdietrich wrote: post #8
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.

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

[deleted]

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#62

Post by Mordisquitos »

dragonwriter wrote: post #43
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…

> 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 c…

If the resulting AI models are protected by copyright that invalidates the claim that AI models being trained on copyrighted materials is fair-use analogous to human beings becoming educated by exposure to copyrighted materials.

Educated human beings are not protected by copyright, hence neither should trained AI models. Conversely, if a copyrightable work is produced based on work which itself is copyrighted, the resulting work needs the consent of the original authors of the prior work.

AI models can't have their ©ake and eat it.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#63

Post by jonpo »

cess11 wrote: post #38
jonpo wrote: post #16

Well done you seem to have liberated an open model trained on open data for blind and visually impaired people. Paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2204.03738 Code: https://github.com/microsoft/banknote-net Training data: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/microsoft/banknote-net/ref... model: https://github.com/microsoft/banknote-net/blob/main/models/b... Kinda easier to download it straight from github. Its licenced under M…

[flagged]

Yes nothing wrong with cool software or showing people how to use it for useful things.

Sorry I'm just kind of sick of the whole 'kool aid', 'rage against AI' thing a lot of people seem to have going on and the way is presented in the post. I have family members with vision impairment helped by this particular app so its a bit personal.

Nothing against opening stuff up and understanding how it works etc. I'd just rather see people build/train useful new models and stuff with the open datasets / models already available.

I guess AI kind of does pay my bills in a round about way.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#64

Post by yieldcrv »

Polizeiposaune wrote: post #39

You wouldn't train a LLM on a corpus containing copyrighted works without ensuring you had the necessary rights to the works, would you?

and therefore everyone has the necessary rights to read works, the necessary rights to critique of the works including for commercial purposes, and the necessary rights to derivative works including for commercial purposes

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#65

Post by a2128 »

jonpo wrote: post #63
cess11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Yes nothing wrong with cool software or showing people how to use it for useful things. Sorry I'm just kind of sick of the whole 'kool aid', 'rage against AI' thing a lot of people seem to have going on and the way is presented in the post. I have family members with vision impairment helped by this particular app so its a bit personal. Nothing against opening stuff up and understanding how it works etc. I'd just rat…

Sadly companies will hoard datasets and model research in the name of competitive advantage. Obviously with this specific model Microsoft chose to make it open, but this is not always the case, and it's not uncommon to read papers or technical reports saying they trained on an "internal dataset"

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#66

Post by cle »

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…

I think you have to distinguish between a model, its implementation, and its weights/parameters. AFAIU:

- Models are processes/concepts, thus not copyrightable, but are subject to trade secret law, contract and license restrictions, patents, etc.

- Concrete implementations may be copyrighted like any code.

- Parameters are "facts", thus not copyrightable, but are similarly subject to trade secret and contract law.

IANAL, not legal advice, yadda yadda yadda.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#67

Post by mikewarot »

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…

>models are locked away in data centers as trade secrets

The architecture and the weights in a model are the secret process used to make a commercially valuable output. It makes the most sense to treat them as a trade secret, in a court of law.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#68

Post by jonpo »

baryphonic wrote: post #49
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…

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 arc…

You can say the same about compiled executable code though.

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#69

Post by graemep »

rusk wrote: post #51
cabalamat wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Isn’t this comment in the public domain? I presume that’s what I’m doing when I’m posting on a forum. If somebody copied and pasted something I wrote on here could I in theory use copyright law to restrict distribution? I think the law would say I published it on a public forum and thus it is in the public domain.

> If somebody copied and pasted something I wrote on here could I in theory use copyright law to restrict distribution?

Yes you could, unless you agreed to forum terms that said otherwise, fair use aside. Its the same in most jurisdictions

Re: Extracting AI models from mobile apps

#70

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

rusk wrote: post #52
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, that’s what I was getting at with my parenthetical. Obviously the work has to have an owned copyright in order to be protected by copyright law.

This is interesting. I wonder could you use it as a basis for “legally” circumventing a technology by applying it to non-copyrighted works.

If you mean that you might be able to decrypt a copyrighted work because you used that same encryption method on a non-copyrighted work, then definitely not. The work under protection will be considered. (Otherwise, I am unsure what you meant.)
Post reply on HN