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I'm not a lawyer and I can't say how existing copyright law applies to this situation, but, how is taking images and feeding them into an ML model different fro

I'm not a lawyer and I can't say how existing copyright law applies to this situation, but, how is taking images and feeding them into an ML model different from taking library code and including it in your software? In both cases, you take a series of bytes (the image data / the library source code) that is ultimately crucial to the functioning of your software, combine it with your own original code you wrote (training / compilation), and end up with a new output (the trained model / the binary executable) that is distinct from any of the original sources. If you use a GPL'd library in your software, then it's uncontroversial to say that you have to follow the terms of the GPL. You can't say "well actually, the compiler is just reading your source code and learning what sort of binary it should produce, just like a human learns by studying source code, so I actually don't have to follow your licensing terms". No one would buy that. You clearly used that library, so you have to obey whatever terms come along with it. Why is it fine to ignore the licensing terms for image data you incorporate into your software, but not third-party source code that you incorporate?

karmasimida 4y ago
> If you use a GPL'd library in your software, then it's uncontroversial to say that you have to follow the terms of the GPL. You can't say "well actually, the compiler is just reading your source code and learning what sort of binary it should produce, just like a human learns by studying source code, so I actually don't have to follow your licensing terms". No one would buy that. You clearly used that library, so you have to obey whatever terms come along with it. What if I read the code, understand its concepts, and re-implements another library that provide similar functionality without directly linking to the original repository, that is not an infringement, and actually how open source community has always been operating, like MariaDB to MySQL, or any projects that markets themselves as 'open source alternative' of some commercial software. I would argue, the diffusion models are really good, it is possible that they capture the essentials of drawing that they learn no different than a human. Put in another way, it masters the imaging process at fundamental level
- LtWorf 4y ago
  > What if I read the code, understand its concepts, and re-implements another library that provide similar functionality without directly linking to the original repository, that is not an infringement It might be… which is why famously wine developers don't look at leaked windows code.
- Jevon23 4y ago
  >What if I read the code, understand its concepts, and re-implements another library that provide similar functionality without directly linking to the original repository, that is not an infringement I agree, that's fine. The analogous situation with image generators would be if the companies that trained the models had a human artist look at every image in their dataset, paint a unique but similar image, and then feed all of those images into the model, so that no copyrighted images were used in training without permission. But that's obviously not what they did. They just fed in the images unaltered, without getting permission.

karmasimida 4y ago

> If you use a GPL'd library in your software, then it's uncontroversial to say that you have to follow the terms of the GPL. You can't say "well actually, the compiler is just reading your source code and learning what sort of binary it should produce, just like a human learns by studying source code, so I actually don't have to follow your licensing terms". No one would buy that. You clearly used that library, so you have to obey whatever terms come along with it. What if I read the code, understand its concepts, and re-implements another library that provide similar functionality without directly linking to the original repository, that is not an infringement, and actually how open source community has always been operating, like MariaDB to MySQL, or any projects that markets themselves as 'open source alternative' of some commercial software. I would argue, the diffusion models are really good, it is possible that they capture the essentials of drawing that they learn no different than a human. Put in another way, it masters the imaging process at fundamental level

LtWorf 4y ago
> What if I read the code, understand its concepts, and re-implements another library that provide similar functionality without directly linking to the original repository, that is not an infringement It might be… which is why famously wine developers don't look at leaked windows code.
Jevon23 4y ago
>What if I read the code, understand its concepts, and re-implements another library that provide similar functionality without directly linking to the original repository, that is not an infringement I agree, that's fine. The analogous situation with image generators would be if the companies that trained the models had a human artist look at every image in their dataset, paint a unique but similar image, and then feed all of those images into the model, so that no copyrighted images were used in training without permission. But that's obviously not what they did. They just fed in the images unaltered, without getting permission.