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I found it interesting from a legal point of view when someone pointed out that the recent "AI dungeon generator" that was using BERT to act like a game master

by Iv 7y ago

I found it interesting from a legal point of view when someone pointed out that the recent "AI dungeon generator" that was using BERT to act like a game master was in some occurrences basically copying (relevant) excerpts from books. Can an AI commit copyright infringment? BERT probably "knows" that Cthulhu is a giant thing evoking squids, tentacle and non-orthonormic dimensions. These are facts based on books, but you can produce copyright infrigement based on those facts. It is called "producing a derived work". In the past years I never managed to get anyone with legal knowledge interested in what they saw as a totally impossible scenario: the idea that AI could one day produce original work y learning its craft, like human do, from copyrighted works. Their criterion was "if you fed copyrighted work into an algorithm to produce a new work, then that's a derived work". Humans are somehow imbued with a magic property that allows them to watch read WH40K books, alien and predator movies, then produce the Starcraft universe, and have it count as original work. We do have a philosophico-legal discussion to have there. And way overdue, if I may. The state of copyright is already late in acknowledging internet, DL-generated work will be even more of a conundrum for it.

sdan 7y ago
I think it comes down to who publishes it. If someone posts it on their blog, then it’s technically them writing it. Pretty sure ai and ghost writers fall into the same legal situation.
Arelius 7y ago
> Humans are somehow imbued with a magic property that allows them to watch read WH40K books, alien and predator movies, then produce the Starcraft universe, and have it count as original work. I feel like this is speculation. Do you have any citations? It seems to me that in this fuzzy area an AI will be judged identically to a human. While you give an example where he StarCraft universe is created and considered original work. There are many cases where a human learns their craft from copyright work, and creates a derived work, fanfic is a huge genre of example. I suspect that in the legal arena the nature and content of the new work will be far more influential in the status of the copyright, than the details of how the new work was created. So, while I think it's likely that something that is generated by an AI that looks like original work will be considered original work. I think a question that is less clear, and much more important is if the AI itself would be considered a derived work. In some ways, it can be argued that an AI is a transformation of the original representation, and that substantial portions of the original work are/can be maintained within the AI itself, just how a work can be transformed by a compressor, but still be considered to maintain the copyright. However afaik this question likely remains still untested. IANAL and all. Also, I think: > BERT probably "knows" that Cthulhu is a giant thing evoking squids, tentacle and non-orthonormic dimensions. Is highly debatable.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  The underlying presumption for copyright is that the work was created by a legal concept called "natural person" which ties into the framework of "legal personhood". One is a natural person simply by the mere fact of having been born. And that's what makes all the difference. This idea pretty much the basis of large swathes of jurisprudence across the world, really. AI, as such, is legally speaking no different from a simple pencil when it comes to writing a book. It's a tool through which a natural person creates a creative work thus establishing a copyright on the part of the natural person. See, what most people fail to see is that copyright isn't tied to the creative work; it's tied to its creator. Hence why copyright seizes to exist some arbitrary amount of time (20, 40, 70 years) after the creator - a natural person - has died. So, when you say "a neural network acquires copyright by itself when it generates a new creative work", you are forced to consider whether a neural network is a "person". Which is a can of worms in itself. (consider animals as persons - case: monkey selfie) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person
  - voxic11 7y ago
    Obviously neural networks created with current technology are not persons in any sense, legal or otherwise. I think the more interesting questions are whether the operator of the neural network is the legal author of its creations and whether such creations satisfy the creativity requirements for copyright. I think the operator would be the author of the work, similar to how the operator of a camera or word processor is the author of works created by those tools. However I think in some cases the work may not meet the creativity requirement. > “[T]he requisite level of creativity is extremely low.” Even a “slight amount” of creative expression will suffice. ... An author’s expression does not need to “be presented in an innovative or surprising way,” but it “cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever.” https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-...
    - CaptArmchair 7y ago
trampypizza 7y ago
I am by no means an expert on this area of the law, but I think this is a really interesting topic that I tried to explore in a recent dissertation. I think the issues come from the fact that copyright law really fails to represent the realities of creativity in humans. As you point out, the laws don't really address the fact that often the things we create are based on all of our experiences and consumption of creative works, yet a machine which can produce the same process may fall foul of the exclusive rights of reproduction and adaptation. Is it merely the fact that humans have consciousness which means that we are able to do this without violating copyright law? At least in the US there is more flexibility around derivitive works, which give creators of derivitive works some avenue to enforce exclusive rights over their creations, or at least avoid claims from original rights holders. Here in the UK we really lack such a flexibility, with the only exceptions along the same lines being 'fair dealing' which is not really a fair comparison because it requires the derivative creator to jump through a bunch of hoops. Having said that, I'm not sure derivative works are really a suitable legal definition for AI created works, but until we can have a conversation about the role of originality and creativity and the role of consciousness in those proesses, this imperfect definition will probably continue to be applied to those works. Lawrence Lessig writes a lot about this sort of thing, if you are interested. EDIT: Also the academic Omri Rachum-Twaig recently wrote a book called 'Copyright Law and Derivative Works: Regulating Creativity' which also covers a lot of issues that are interesting, such as the disconnect between the psychology of creativity and the structure of copyright law.
beefield 7y ago
> We do have a philosophico-legal discussion to have there. There is not that much to discuss. If you leave vested interests out, that is. Future generations will see copyright in same way we look at feudalism or slavery today. Assuming we avoid the future pointed by Idiocracy.

by Iv 7y ago

sdan 7y ago

I think it comes down to who publishes it. If someone posts it on their blog, then it’s technically them writing it. Pretty sure ai and ghost writers fall into the same legal situation.

Arelius 7y ago

> Humans are somehow imbued with a magic property that allows them to watch read WH40K books, alien and predator movies, then produce the Starcraft universe, and have it count as original work. I feel like this is speculation. Do you have any citations? It seems to me that in this fuzzy area an AI will be judged identically to a human. While you give an example where he StarCraft universe is created and considered original work. There are many cases where a human learns their craft from copyright work, and creates a derived work, fanfic is a huge genre of example. I suspect that in the legal arena the nature and content of the new work will be far more influential in the status of the copyright, than the details of how the new work was created. So, while I think it's likely that something that is generated by an AI that looks like original work will be considered original work. I think a question that is less clear, and much more important is if the AI itself would be considered a derived work. In some ways, it can be argued that an AI is a transformation of the original representation, and that substantial portions of the original work are/can be maintained within the AI itself, just how a work can be transformed by a compressor, but still be considered to maintain the copyright. However afaik this question likely remains still untested. IANAL and all. Also, I think: > BERT probably "knows" that Cthulhu is a giant thing evoking squids, tentacle and non-orthonormic dimensions. Is highly debatable.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
The underlying presumption for copyright is that the work was created by a legal concept called "natural person" which ties into the framework of "legal personhood". One is a natural person simply by the mere fact of having been born. And that's what makes all the difference. This idea pretty much the basis of large swathes of jurisprudence across the world, really. AI, as such, is legally speaking no different from a simple pencil when it comes to writing a book. It's a tool through which a natural person creates a creative work thus establishing a copyright on the part of the natural person. See, what most people fail to see is that copyright isn't tied to the creative work; it's tied to its creator. Hence why copyright seizes to exist some arbitrary amount of time (20, 40, 70 years) after the creator - a natural person - has died. So, when you say "a neural network acquires copyright by itself when it generates a new creative work", you are forced to consider whether a neural network is a "person". Which is a can of worms in itself. (consider animals as persons - case: monkey selfie) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_person
- voxic11 7y ago
  Obviously neural networks created with current technology are not persons in any sense, legal or otherwise. I think the more interesting questions are whether the operator of the neural network is the legal author of its creations and whether such creations satisfy the creativity requirements for copyright. I think the operator would be the author of the work, similar to how the operator of a camera or word processor is the author of works created by those tools. However I think in some cases the work may not meet the creativity requirement. > “[T]he requisite level of creativity is extremely low.” Even a “slight amount” of creative expression will suffice. ... An author’s expression does not need to “be presented in an innovative or surprising way,” but it “cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever.” https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-authorship.pdf https://www.copyright.gov/comp3/chap300/ch300-copyrightable-...
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago

trampypizza 7y ago

I am by no means an expert on this area of the law, but I think this is a really interesting topic that I tried to explore in a recent dissertation. I think the issues come from the fact that copyright law really fails to represent the realities of creativity in humans. As you point out, the laws don't really address the fact that often the things we create are based on all of our experiences and consumption of creative works, yet a machine which can produce the same process may fall foul of the exclusive rights of reproduction and adaptation. Is it merely the fact that humans have consciousness which means that we are able to do this without violating copyright law? At least in the US there is more flexibility around derivitive works, which give creators of derivitive works some avenue to enforce exclusive rights over their creations, or at least avoid claims from original rights holders. Here in the UK we really lack such a flexibility, with the only exceptions along the same lines being 'fair dealing' which is not really a fair comparison because it requires the derivative creator to jump through a bunch of hoops. Having said that, I'm not sure derivative works are really a suitable legal definition for AI created works, but until we can have a conversation about the role of originality and creativity and the role of consciousness in those proesses, this imperfect definition will probably continue to be applied to those works. Lawrence Lessig writes a lot about this sort of thing, if you are interested. EDIT: Also the academic Omri Rachum-Twaig recently wrote a book called 'Copyright Law and Derivative Works: Regulating Creativity' which also covers a lot of issues that are interesting, such as the disconnect between the psychology of creativity and the structure of copyright law.

beefield 7y ago

> We do have a philosophico-legal discussion to have there. There is not that much to discuss. If you leave vested interests out, that is. Future generations will see copyright in same way we look at feudalism or slavery today. Assuming we avoid the future pointed by Idiocracy.