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US Copyright Office: Generative AI Training [pdf]

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Re: US Copyright Office: Generative AI Training [pdf]

#2

Post by dave1629 »

From the Conclusion: "In applying current law, we conclude that several stages in the development of generative AI involve using copyrighted works in ways that implicate the owners’ exclusive rights. The key question, as most commenters agreed, is whether those acts of prima facie infringement can be excused as fair use. ... But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries. ... These groundbreaking technologies should benefit both the innovators who design them and the creators whose content fuels them, as well as the general public."

Re: US Copyright Office: Generative AI Training [pdf]

#3

Post by yieldcrv »

dave1629 wrote: post #2

From the Conclusion: "In applying current law, we conclude that several stages in the development of generative AI involve using copyrighted works in ways that implicate the owners’ exclusive rights. The key question, as most commenters agreed, is whether those acts of prima facie infringement can be excused as fair use. ... But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content t…

So many issues with that, the copyright office doesn’t police access, which involves consuming, the copyright office polices distributing.

So then for them to determine fair use, they need the department of justice involved to say the access was illegal? since when. just to highlight the absurdity. “Illegal” meaning a terms of service violation despite the fact that everyone using the service can consume copyrighted works? This circles back to the now paradoxical issue about it not being copyright infringement to consume, but requires policing the terms of service by the copyright office which is impossible.

This is too paradoxical to even entertain, but thats why the office led with “current law”, because it is completely unaccommodating to a real social problem. A lot of artists and people are uncomfortable with the current law, and generative AI. New law could patch this except:

Artists don't actually like the generative AI that isn't trained on copyrighted works either.

The laws are going to change too slow and there are already models that fulfill the high bar that detractors started with.

New works that were specifically licensed for use in AI training and compensated.

The outcome is still the same. More people can express themselves. People with years of discipline are no longer needed.

By the time any law could actually address noncompliant models - to this new imagined standard - compliant models will already have obsoleted the same trade.

Re: US Copyright Office: Generative AI Training [pdf]

#5

Post by adt »

Part 1 (replicas) https://copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligen...

Part 2 (copyrightability) https://copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligen...

Part 3 (GenAI training) https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

Analysis in previous and upcoming editions of The Memo: https://lifearchitect.ai/memo/

Re: US Copyright Office: Generative AI Training [pdf]

#7

Post by comex »

yieldcrv wrote: post #3
dave1629 wrote: post #2

From the Conclusion: "In applying current law, we conclude that several stages in the development of generative AI involve using copyrighted works in ways that implicate the owners’ exclusive rights. The key question, as most commenters agreed, is whether those acts of prima facie infringement can be excused as fair use. ... But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content t…

So many issues with that, the copyright office doesn’t police access, which involves consuming, the copyright office polices distributing. So then for them to determine fair use, they need the department of justice involved to say the access was illegal? since when. just to highlight the absurdity. “Illegal” meaning a terms of service violation despite the fact that everyone using the service can consume copyrighted…

FYI, the Copyright Office doesn’t enforce copyright law or determine its correct interpretation. Courts do. The legal analysis in this report is really just a suggestion, and judges probably won’t give it too much weight.

As for illegal access, I agree that the report uses the term a bit too loosely. But as we’ve seen in the Meta case, some companies have obtained training material not through TOS-violating downloads but through literal (unauthorized) torrents. As we’ve also seen in the Meta case, even torrenting is technically not copyright infringement if you’re not seeding. But the process does rely on someone else seeding, so the report doesn’t seem wholly unreasonable in suggesting that this could “reflect bad faith” or “bear on the character of the use”.

Re: US Copyright Office: Generative AI Training [pdf]

#10

Post by jawon »

yieldcrv wrote: post #3
dave1629 wrote: post #2

From the Conclusion: "In applying current law, we conclude that several stages in the development of generative AI involve using copyrighted works in ways that implicate the owners’ exclusive rights. The key question, as most commenters agreed, is whether those acts of prima facie infringement can be excused as fair use. ... But making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content t…

So many issues with that, the copyright office doesn’t police access, which involves consuming, the copyright office polices distributing. So then for them to determine fair use, they need the department of justice involved to say the access was illegal? since when. just to highlight the absurdity. “Illegal” meaning a terms of service violation despite the fact that everyone using the service can consume copyrighted…

This is a standard book copyright notice:

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

“Reproduced” and “electronic” are the relevant terms here.

I remember when gpt-3 came out and you could get it to spit out chunks of Harry Potter and I wondered why no-one was being sued.

The models are built on copyright infringement. Authors and publishers of any kind should be able to opt out of being included in training data and ideally opt-in should be the default.

And I hope one day someone trains a model without the use of works of fiction and we find a qualitative difference in their performance. Does a coding model really need to encode the customs, mores and concerns of Victorian era fictional characters to write a python function?

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