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Things are about to get worse for generative AI

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#721

Post by contrast »

idopmstuff wrote: post #689
strix_varius wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's why I've always felt like the idea that AI should be blocked from creating these things is generally not the right place to look at copyright. Rather, the issue should be if someone uses AI to create a picture of Mario and then does something commercial with it, you should be able to go after the person engaging in the commercial behavior with the copyrighted image. With you until here for several reasons: 1…

> 1. It's not possible for you as an individual consumer to know whether or not the AI result is a violation, given an AI that has been trained on copyrighted works. I see what you're saying in some cases, but in the cases where the user is explicitly attempting to create images of copyrighted characters (e.g. the Mario example), they would definitely know. I honestly don't see this as a practical issue - as far as I…

The law tends to be weighted towards the consumer, but the law does apply to producers and supply chains, too. Photoshop doesn’t come with a library of copyrighted images, and would not be able to do so without licensing those images (whether they were explicitly labelled or not). Ditto any other tool.

If people had to pay for the AI equivalent of that image library (ie the costs of training the model), I doubt many would. It’s phenomenally expensive. Costs for a creative tool and a copy of whatever IP you personally want to play with are negligible by comparison.

It’s never been the case before that a toolmaker could ship their tools with copyrighted materials because they’ve no control over the end product. The answer doesn’t change whether they charge or not, and there no reason why AI should change that either.

People tend to “feel like it’s a bit more of a gray area” when there is cool free stuff at stake, and I’m no exception. It would be a more convincing question if it was “what if we had to pay our fair share of the costs involved?”, rather than “what if we could just have it all at no charge?”.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#722

Post by regularfry »

stubish wrote: post #692
regularfry wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a null question. Training itself is neither publication nor distribution, so copyright can't be relevant at that point. "Fair use" just isn't a concept applicable to training.

Training stores a variation of the source material, which is arguably distribution. And selling the result or selling access to it certainly is. So fair use applies, and hoping a court thinks the process is transformative to count as fair use. Given original material can be spat out, my money is on a court thinking this is about as transformative as a compression algorithm.

Selling the result is where it's on dodgy ground. I disagree about storage though.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#723

Post by opyate »

kromem wrote: post #665
asylteltine wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how are you supposed to make money from something you invent? Let’s say you make a hit video game. Without copyright people can pirate your game, steal the art, make unauthorized derivative works, etc. it’s just theft.

Star Citizen could release and immediately be pirated and never sell a single copy from release onwards and likely still have ended up profitable. Maybe the business models around creation need to be revisited such that interested parties pay for the creation of a product and not distribution of a product. Where periodically at each stage of that creation you are getting continued buy in that what you are creating ha…

> If you are an indie game developer...

We're kinda doing this already with Patreon: give us 5 quid a month, and you get a little game every whenever.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#724

Post by fulafel »

pardoned_turkey wrote: post #584
ctoth wrote: post #470

Everybody just buying into the corporate narrative that anyone can actually own these sorts of things. Who truly owns the tales of Snow White and Cinderella? These stories didn't originate with Disney; they are part of a rich tapestry of folklore passed down through generations. Disney's success was partly built on adapting these existing narratives, which were once shared and reshaped by communities over centuries.…

Oh come on. Copyright is a fairly ancient concept that benefits normal people as much as it benefits big corporations. Most book authors, songwriters, and so on aren't fat cats, and they would be harmed if we had zero protections for the duplication of their work. They'd need to depend on state sponsorship or charitable private patronage, both of which are problematic for obvious reasons and limit the range of artist…

What kind of support is there for the hypothesis that our current copyright system is close to ideal in incentivising production of new works? It seems to me that there's a very strong "winner takes all" distribution and we could be a better culture if we had a system that took some of the opulent resources poured into to star wars franchise, rehashed murder simulators and tiktok and distributed it to some poor artists whose worthiness was decided in some other way than being a mass market best seller.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#725

Post by regularfry »

loki-ai wrote: post #715
regularfry wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a null question. Training itself is neither publication nor distribution, so copyright can't be relevant at that point. "Fair use" just isn't a concept applicable to training.

Storing copyright content itself can sometimes be illegal - like ripping a Bluray. What if these frames are now stored on their servers and go into the training dataset?

The illegal bit of ripping a Blu-ray is circumventing the copy protection, not the storage. At least, that's how I've always understood the effect of the DMCA on the situation.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#726

Post by troupo »

haskellandchill wrote: post #670
troupo wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am I not allowed to draw Mario Probably not for anything commercial, not for any exhibitions or public viewing etc. You'd have to check the actual trademarks etc.

Hasn't pop art already been there done that?

There are extensions, and exceptions, and different licenses applicable, and fair use, and the concept of transformativeness, and... :)

Basically, IANAL, but if you just draw a picture of Mario, all you can do is hang it on your fridge. If you make it out of colored oatmeal, that may be enough of a transformative work for you to be able to sell and exhibit it. Or, say, a satirical cartoon for your newspaper featuring Mario, that might also be okay.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#727

Post by e40 »

chubot wrote: post #655
shkkmo wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pretty sure it was never like that, it was always gated by iTunes. Then you need to recalibrate your certainty assessment. Not only did I do this personally with both music and videos, it is incredibly easy to find documentation of the steps. First google result: https://www.alphr.com/add-music-to-ipod-without-itunes/ Apple's ipod sales absolutely benefited significantly from music piracy. Especially early on when…

I looked through the instructions I guess I'll just say "meh" -- it doesn't negate the main point, which is that Apple spent a lot of money and time to acquire rights, and they have a music store. It is gated by iTunes, just not 100% I know some people side load stuff on devices -- there's no device where that's impossible.

I had an iPod filled with music that I ripped from CDs and downloaded. It was absolutely a thing.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#728

Post by strix_varius »

contrast wrote: post #721
idopmstuff wrote: post #689

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. It's not possible for you as an individual consumer to know whether or not the AI result is a violation, given an AI that has been trained on copyrighted works. I see what you're saying in some cases, but in the cases where the user is explicitly attempting to create images of copyrighted characters (e.g. the Mario example), they would definitely know. I honestly don't see this as a practical issue - as far as I…

The law tends to be weighted towards the consumer, but the law does apply to producers and supply chains, too. Photoshop doesn’t come with a library of copyrighted images, and would not be able to do so without licensing those images (whether they were explicitly labelled or not). Ditto any other tool. If people had to pay for the AI equivalent of that image library (ie the costs of training the model), I doubt many…

Exactly - AI and "free" (scraped) training data aren't inseparable. Any of the big players could train a model exclusively on content they own. Photoshop is a good case in point here - that's what Adobe has done, since they own a huge stock photography library.

But that would unveil the truth of the current situation: early AI adopters, myself included, are benefitting from an obfuscated form of theft. If OpenAI had to compensate the contributors to their training set, I wouldn't get such generous access for $20/month.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#729

Post by amelius »

anileated wrote: post #501
tsumnia wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I cover generative AI in my Ethics in AI lecture, one of few soapbox opinions I give is that GenAI is doing essentially what people do - copy others. Picasso has a quote about "Good Artists copy, Great Artists steal", which doesn't mean try to pass Lario and Muigi off as your own, but rather that great artists are able to take aspects from other works (also called 'inspiration') without being caught. My personal…

The entire argument that “LLM must be allowed the right to learn like a human” hinges on LLM being enough like a human in relevant ways in the first place. An LLM is not enough like a human in relevant ways , however; it has no agency, will, freedom, conscience, self-determination; it is a tool. If this tool “runs on” copyrighted creative works, and $CORP operates this tool for profit, then $CORP is the one to answer…

This nails it.

Re: Things are about to get worse for generative AI

#730

Post by sjducb »

I think it’s a question of what counts as publication.

I think that an AI model is analogous to an employee. Imagine I ask my employee to write an article, and they just copy an existing one from the times. That’s plagiarism and bad work, not copyright infringement.

If I then decide to publish the plagiarised article, then I have committed copyright infringement.

I once ran into this exact problem with a human. I hired a designer to make some artwork for an app. When I launched the app it turned out that the human had just copied the artwork from another game. It’s my problem that I hired an idiot, and my problem that my app was infringing the copyright of another app. (We redesigned the graphics very quickly)

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