8 ms·

> If the AI industry is to survive, we need a clear legal rule that neural networks, and the outputs they produce, are not presumed to be copies of the data use

by Taywee 4y ago

> If the AI industry is to survive, we need a clear legal rule that neural networks, and the outputs they produce, are not presumed to be copies of the data used to train them. Otherwise, the entire industry will be plagued with lawsuits that will stifle innovation and only enrich plaintiff’s lawyers Or maybe, get this, how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? How is it a bad thing that somebody can't legally steal other peoples' work without their permission because of pesky copyright?

candiodari 4y ago
Copyright only governs publishing. So you have the right to train AI with any and all data you have access to, as far as copyright is concerned.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Yes but using AI to generate works that can be used commercially is the way commercial AI companies plan to monetize AI.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    There have been leaks where OpenAI is charging $42/month to use their service. How much of that is going back to the copyright holders whose work their service derives value from ?
    - chii 4y ago
      > How much of that is going back to the copyright holders whose work their service derives value from ? how much of the earnings of the student of art goes to the textbook authors, paintings and learning materials he used to get to where he is today?
      - Groxx 4y ago
        Derivative works are their own things (when sufficiently derivative). And AIs are not humans - using an algorithm does not automatically remove the copyright. See also "I uploaded a movie to youtube but it's upside down, why did it get taken down".
        yosame 4y ago
        But that's because the movie is still recognisable. Using an algorithm doesn't automatically remove copyright, but if the algorithm transforms the data to a point where it can't be recognised as the original work, then it isn't breaking copyright.
        Groxx 4y ago
        Those may be fine, yes. But the AI as a whole is capable of reproducing the original in a recognizable form, and it does so on demand quite easily, because it was trained on them - how is it different than selling a zip file containing millions of copyrighted works, and also a bunch of new stuff?
        chii 4y ago
        > how is it different than selling a zip file containing millions of copyrighted works so you're saying that the digits of pi is violating copyright then?
        Groxx 4y ago
        I can ask one to produce copyrighted works. The other, not so much. That's a rather weak straw-man.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Copyright law hinges on human element of the actions taking place, not on mathematical technicality. The digits of pi are not creative human expression, nor are they derived from human expression, they're a factual mathematical discovery. They can neither infringe on copyright, nor are they subject to it themselves.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Groxx 4y ago
  Train it on, perhaps. But personal not-published use is a rather small niche compared to the current commercial explosion.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  > Copyright only governs publishing. So you have the right to train AI with any and all data you have access to, as far as copyright is concerned. Sure, but you still just cannot output anything that looks like a derived or copied work. So, maybe ... how about if image generation nets hold onto the training images so that it can compare the generated output against its training data to ensure that it is not too similar. /s (but only a little)
adrianN 4y ago
As an extension of this, only allow children to look at works they purchased publication rights to, lest their creative output becomes influenced by a different person's style.
- firstbabylonian 4y ago
  AI is not human children.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    I can instruct an AI to draw Mickey Mouse and infringe copyright and I can instruct a child to draw Mickey Mouse and infringe copyright.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - mattwad 4y ago
      The problem is there's no way a user will know whose copyright they are infringing when they ask AI to "paint a landscape." Maybe the AI needs to be able to print out a list of sources to provide attribution. That would be interesting.
      - est31 4y ago
        Artists get inspired by others all the time, and if the results are far enough from each other, then nobody has a problem with that. In fact, pre copyright, the similarities used to be even larger. Art lives from the concept of taking ideas, and improving on them.
      - chii 4y ago
        > they ask AI to "paint a landscape." that's the responsibility of the user said AI to check.
    - threeseed 4y ago
echelon 4y ago
> Or maybe, get this, how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? How is it a bad thing that somebody can't legally steal other peoples' work without their permission because of pesky copyright? On one extreme: "Unless you pay your annual Disney fee for having watched Disney films in early childhood, you will need to return your brain to us for processing. Disney was used as the basis for all concepts you know, and as such, Disney owns all subsequent intellectual output of your brain." And on the other: In the age of AI, copyright will cease to hold weight. We'll make more new content on a per-month basis than all of recorded human history. The old regime must be thrown away to accommodate the radically new world we're entering. We'll land somewhere in-between, and I'm hoping it's much closer to (or even precisely) the latter.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Very curious that so many people adopted this position exactly when it became feasible for giant corporations to profit by mass producing laundered copyrighted works!
  - echelon 4y ago
    Those wanting AI to respect copyright are going to find that the big players will navigate copyright just fine. It's the small players that won't. They're advocating for institutional control over AI.
    - threeseed 4y ago
      So if I want AI to respect copyright to protect individual artists, designers etc. I am not fighting for the smaller players but for large enterprises. That is illogical.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      One of the first commercial uses of modern neural networks was Microsoft laundering GPL code with Copilot, so I’m not really sure what you mean by saying that “big players will navigate copyright just fine”.
gedy 4y ago
If you publish/present something for consumption, it ends up in their brain's neural network. It's not stealing.
stale2002 4y ago
> how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? That's what they did! It was in fair use. So yes, they did have the right to legally train the data on copyrighted images.
- threeseed 4y ago
  > It was in fair use Many artists don't believe this and the law is very much unclear. In many cases the AI generated work literally looks like a clone.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - moomoo3000 4y ago
    I'm curious the effort spent prompt-crafting and searching for a seed to arrive at a similar image. Have they provided the prompt and seed used?
- LtWorf 4y ago
  Train on data: sure… but sell the output? Different question altogether.
seydor 4y ago
> legally have the right to use is the "right to use in ML training" well defined?
LtWorf 4y ago
But we don't want poor innocent microsoft to train models on their own code, do we?
astrange 4y ago
The EU has a copyright exemption for noncommercial model training, and at least the UK is changing that to even allow commercial model training, without even an opt-out required. So it appears they legally have the right to use anything. Why should you want a model designed to know all human knowledge to know only public-domain knowledge?
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
> how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? Well, this is the crux of the matter, isn't it? Do you, a human, have the right to look at copyrighted works and learn from them? Do you have the right to use AI to do the same?
i_like_apis 4y ago
You’re talking about training. Training is legal. - If you bought the book, you can read it. - If the book is free, you can read it. - If the painting is in a museum, or on Wikipedia, you can visit it. - If Bozo the clown says you’re not allowed to look at drawings he posted online, it’s ok. You still can. Same for AI.

by Taywee 4y ago

candiodari 4y ago

Copyright only governs publishing. So you have the right to train AI with any and all data you have access to, as far as copyright is concerned.

kube-system 4y ago
Yes but using AI to generate works that can be used commercially is the way commercial AI companies plan to monetize AI.
- threeseed 4y ago
  There have been leaks where OpenAI is charging $42/month to use their service. How much of that is going back to the copyright holders whose work their service derives value from ?
  - chii 4y ago
    > How much of that is going back to the copyright holders whose work their service derives value from ? how much of the earnings of the student of art goes to the textbook authors, paintings and learning materials he used to get to where he is today?
    - Groxx 4y ago
      Derivative works are their own things (when sufficiently derivative). And AIs are not humans - using an algorithm does not automatically remove the copyright. See also "I uploaded a movie to youtube but it's upside down, why did it get taken down".
      - yosame 4y ago
        But that's because the movie is still recognisable. Using an algorithm doesn't automatically remove copyright, but if the algorithm transforms the data to a point where it can't be recognised as the original work, then it isn't breaking copyright.
        Groxx 4y ago
        Those may be fine, yes. But the AI as a whole is capable of reproducing the original in a recognizable form, and it does so on demand quite easily, because it was trained on them - how is it different than selling a zip file containing millions of copyrighted works, and also a bunch of new stuff?
        chii 4y ago
        > how is it different than selling a zip file containing millions of copyrighted works so you're saying that the digits of pi is violating copyright then?
        Groxx 4y ago
        I can ask one to produce copyrighted works. The other, not so much. That's a rather weak straw-man.
        kube-system 4y ago
        Copyright law hinges on human element of the actions taking place, not on mathematical technicality. The digits of pi are not creative human expression, nor are they derived from human expression, they're a factual mathematical discovery. They can neither infringe on copyright, nor are they subject to it themselves.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Groxx 4y ago
Train it on, perhaps. But personal not-published use is a rather small niche compared to the current commercial explosion.
lelanthran 4y ago
> Copyright only governs publishing. So you have the right to train AI with any and all data you have access to, as far as copyright is concerned. Sure, but you still just cannot output anything that looks like a derived or copied work. So, maybe ... how about if image generation nets hold onto the training images so that it can compare the generated output against its training data to ensure that it is not too similar. /s (but only a little)

adrianN 4y ago

As an extension of this, only allow children to look at works they purchased publication rights to, lest their creative output becomes influenced by a different person's style.

firstbabylonian 4y ago
AI is not human children.
- adrianN 4y ago
  I can instruct an AI to draw Mickey Mouse and infringe copyright and I can instruct a child to draw Mickey Mouse and infringe copyright.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - mattwad 4y ago
    The problem is there's no way a user will know whose copyright they are infringing when they ask AI to "paint a landscape." Maybe the AI needs to be able to print out a list of sources to provide attribution. That would be interesting.
    - est31 4y ago
      Artists get inspired by others all the time, and if the results are far enough from each other, then nobody has a problem with that. In fact, pre copyright, the similarities used to be even larger. Art lives from the concept of taking ideas, and improving on them.
    - chii 4y ago
      > they ask AI to "paint a landscape." that's the responsibility of the user said AI to check.
  - threeseed 4y ago

echelon 4y ago

> Or maybe, get this, how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? How is it a bad thing that somebody can't legally steal other peoples' work without their permission because of pesky copyright? On one extreme: "Unless you pay your annual Disney fee for having watched Disney films in early childhood, you will need to return your brain to us for processing. Disney was used as the basis for all concepts you know, and as such, Disney owns all subsequent intellectual output of your brain." And on the other: In the age of AI, copyright will cease to hold weight. We'll make more new content on a per-month basis than all of recorded human history. The old regime must be thrown away to accommodate the radically new world we're entering. We'll land somewhere in-between, and I'm hoping it's much closer to (or even precisely) the latter.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
Very curious that so many people adopted this position exactly when it became feasible for giant corporations to profit by mass producing laundered copyrighted works!
- echelon 4y ago
  Those wanting AI to respect copyright are going to find that the big players will navigate copyright just fine. It's the small players that won't. They're advocating for institutional control over AI.
  - threeseed 4y ago
    So if I want AI to respect copyright to protect individual artists, designers etc. I am not fighting for the smaller players but for large enterprises. That is illogical.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    One of the first commercial uses of modern neural networks was Microsoft laundering GPL code with Copilot, so I’m not really sure what you mean by saying that “big players will navigate copyright just fine”.

gedy 4y ago

If you publish/present something for consumption, it ends up in their brain's neural network. It's not stealing.

stale2002 4y ago

> how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? That's what they did! It was in fair use. So yes, they did have the right to legally train the data on copyrighted images.

threeseed 4y ago
> It was in fair use Many artists don't believe this and the law is very much unclear. In many cases the AI generated work literally looks like a clone.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- moomoo3000 4y ago
  I'm curious the effort spent prompt-crafting and searching for a seed to arrive at a similar image. Have they provided the prompt and seed used?
LtWorf 4y ago
Train on data: sure… but sell the output? Different question altogether.

seydor 4y ago

> legally have the right to use is the "right to use in ML training" well defined?

LtWorf 4y ago

But we don't want poor innocent microsoft to train models on their own code, do we?

astrange 4y ago

The EU has a copyright exemption for noncommercial model training, and at least the UK is changing that to even allow commercial model training, without even an opt-out required. So it appears they legally have the right to use anything. Why should you want a model designed to know all human knowledge to know only public-domain knowledge?

oneeyedpigeon 4y ago

> how about people running AI only feed them information that they legally have the right to use? Well, this is the crux of the matter, isn't it? Do you, a human, have the right to look at copyrighted works and learn from them? Do you have the right to use AI to do the same?

i_like_apis 4y ago

You’re talking about training. Training is legal. - If you bought the book, you can read it. - If the book is free, you can read it. - If the painting is in a museum, or on Wikipedia, you can visit it. - If Bozo the clown says you’re not allowed to look at drawings he posted online, it’s ok. You still can. Same for AI.