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I'm starting to think that use of works in a training set is a category not covered well by existing copyright law, and it may be important to require separate

I'm starting to think that use of works in a training set is a category not covered well by existing copyright law, and it may be important to require separate explicit opt-in agreement by law (and receipt of some consideration in return) in order to be considered legitimate use. The vast majority of copyrighted works were conceived and negotiated under conditions where ML reproduction capabilities didn't exist and nobody knew what related value they were negotiating away or buying.

musicale 4y ago
Derivative works or remixes usually require a license. Artists could very reasonably argue that AI-generated images are derivative works from their own images - especially if there is notable similarity or portions appear to be copied. They could also point out that their images were used for commercial purposes without permission and without compensation to generate works that compete with their own. For example, even a short sample used in a song usually has to be licensed. Cover versions of songs may qualify for a compulsory license with a set royalty payment scale. However some reuse (such as transformative use, parodies, or use of snippets for various purposes, especially non-commercial purposes) may be considered fair use. AI companies could very reasonably argue that use of images for training AI models is transformative and qualifies as fair use, that no components of the original images are reused in AI-generated images, and that AI-generated images are no more infringing than human-generated images which show influences from other artists. Absent additional law, I expect the legal system will have to sort out whether AI-generated images infringe the copyright of their training images, and if so what sort of licensing would be appropriate for AI-generated (or other software/machine-generated) images based on training data from images that are under copyright.
- AJ007 4y ago
  I propose that it is impossible to prove that any content created after 2022 did or did not utilize ML/AI during the process of its creation (art, code, music, audio, text.) Thus, anything produced after 2022 should not be eligible for copyright protection. Everything pre-2022 may retain the existing copyright protection but should be subject to extra taxes on royalties and fees given the exorbitant privilege. Though this sounds extreme, enforcing the alternative would break any last remnant of human privacy. It would kill the independent operation of computing as we know it and severely cripple AI/ML research when we need it most: human alignment. It is possible that a catastrophic event occurs and halts the supply chain of advanced semiconductors in the near future, in which case the debate can be postponed indefinitely.
- wwweston 4y ago
  > AI companies could very reasonably argue that use of images for training AI models is transformative and qualifies as fair use Yep. They could. And people do. But this particular use is entirely new, though. Old conceptions of fair use can't and shouldn't cover it. "Transformative"? Sure, but there's a difference between transforming a work once and laying hold of it in automation to be transformed on request millions or billions of times in degrees ranging from simple to convoluted. It's hard to argue that the right to this exists in fair use when awareness of the possibility didn't exist when fair use conceptions were constructed. The output isn't the issue so much as the consent & consideration for use of the input. We'll need case law or statutory law that understands this. It should be possible, but it should be possible on an opt-in basis. When you're training a model, you should know. > AI-generated images are no more infringing than human-generated images which show influences from other artists. If we end up with a policy differentiating the two and privileging humans and works created by them, I'm fine with that.
novok 4y ago
If this kind of abstract copyright regime of 'I had the idea first, and anyone who uses a derivative of my idea must pay me money!' is a very sillpery slope of anyone who makes art or music of any genre needing to pay a royalty to sony/disney, because that is where these 'flavor copyrights' will end up going. The right kind of ambitious amoral lawyer in a common law regime will leverage an AI royalty law into a generic style copyright law because that is what will be needed to write this law properly. And on top of that, it will become a spotify where each creator gets a sum total of $0.00000000001 per AI their media item was trained on and maybe a few dollars a month, while paying a greater tax to apple-sony-disney whenever their AI style recognizers charge you a royalty bill for using whatever bullshit styles it notices in your media items. Copyright should stay in it's 'exact duplication' box, lest we release an even worse intellectual property monster on the world.
- wwweston 4y ago
  > If this kind of abstract copyright regime of 'I had the idea first, and anyone who uses a derivative of my idea must pay me money!' is a very sillpery slope This is a cartoon conception of both existing copyright and the proposal I described. Copyright applies to works, not "ideas" (William Gibson doesn't have a copyright claim on the "idea" of a virtual reality but he does on _Neuromancer_ as a work). It gives creators incentives and a stake in their work by allowing for some degree of control in how works are used and especially how they're distributed. What I'm proposing isn't that different, and it's simple: People should be able to decide if their work is put into a training set, and what they get in return for it. That's it. No "flavor copyrights." No ownership of ideas. Just a claim on the creator's work and how it's used/ distributed. Specifically updated to cover a case that didn't exist 10 years ago, a case whose explicit intention is reproduction of not just one narrow aspect of the work but a combinatorially large number of aspects of the work (there's no other reason for adding it to the training set, that's the nature of these models). > it will become a spotify where each creator gets a sum total of $0.00000000001 per AI their media item was trained on "the artists will get such a small payout so we should make sure they get nothing" is quite the take. I think "artists should be able to negotiate what consideration they want in return for their work for a training set" is a better one. It's certainly better than "people collecting training data should be able to take anything they can get their digital hands on without any consideration other than possession." Maybe some artists would take a nanocent per use. Maybe they wouldn't. That should be up to them. Part of the reason why services like Spotify are so terrible economically is the way digital rights were assumed by labels and streamers often as extensions of older pre-digital conceptions without much in the way of negotiation by artists. The current moment is a chance to do better across an equally large (if not larger) technological shift.

musicale 4y ago

Derivative works or remixes usually require a license. Artists could very reasonably argue that AI-generated images are derivative works from their own images - especially if there is notable similarity or portions appear to be copied. They could also point out that their images were used for commercial purposes without permission and without compensation to generate works that compete with their own. For example, even a short sample used in a song usually has to be licensed. Cover versions of songs may qualify for a compulsory license with a set royalty payment scale. However some reuse (such as transformative use, parodies, or use of snippets for various purposes, especially non-commercial purposes) may be considered fair use. AI companies could very reasonably argue that use of images for training AI models is transformative and qualifies as fair use, that no components of the original images are reused in AI-generated images, and that AI-generated images are no more infringing than human-generated images which show influences from other artists. Absent additional law, I expect the legal system will have to sort out whether AI-generated images infringe the copyright of their training images, and if so what sort of licensing would be appropriate for AI-generated (or other software/machine-generated) images based on training data from images that are under copyright.

AJ007 4y ago
I propose that it is impossible to prove that any content created after 2022 did or did not utilize ML/AI during the process of its creation (art, code, music, audio, text.) Thus, anything produced after 2022 should not be eligible for copyright protection. Everything pre-2022 may retain the existing copyright protection but should be subject to extra taxes on royalties and fees given the exorbitant privilege. Though this sounds extreme, enforcing the alternative would break any last remnant of human privacy. It would kill the independent operation of computing as we know it and severely cripple AI/ML research when we need it most: human alignment. It is possible that a catastrophic event occurs and halts the supply chain of advanced semiconductors in the near future, in which case the debate can be postponed indefinitely.
wwweston 4y ago
> AI companies could very reasonably argue that use of images for training AI models is transformative and qualifies as fair use Yep. They could. And people do. But this particular use is entirely new, though. Old conceptions of fair use can't and shouldn't cover it. "Transformative"? Sure, but there's a difference between transforming a work once and laying hold of it in automation to be transformed on request millions or billions of times in degrees ranging from simple to convoluted. It's hard to argue that the right to this exists in fair use when awareness of the possibility didn't exist when fair use conceptions were constructed. The output isn't the issue so much as the consent & consideration for use of the input. We'll need case law or statutory law that understands this. It should be possible, but it should be possible on an opt-in basis. When you're training a model, you should know. > AI-generated images are no more infringing than human-generated images which show influences from other artists. If we end up with a policy differentiating the two and privileging humans and works created by them, I'm fine with that.

novok 4y ago

If this kind of abstract copyright regime of 'I had the idea first, and anyone who uses a derivative of my idea must pay me money!' is a very sillpery slope of anyone who makes art or music of any genre needing to pay a royalty to sony/disney, because that is where these 'flavor copyrights' will end up going. The right kind of ambitious amoral lawyer in a common law regime will leverage an AI royalty law into a generic style copyright law because that is what will be needed to write this law properly. And on top of that, it will become a spotify where each creator gets a sum total of $0.00000000001 per AI their media item was trained on and maybe a few dollars a month, while paying a greater tax to apple-sony-disney whenever their AI style recognizers charge you a royalty bill for using whatever bullshit styles it notices in your media items. Copyright should stay in it's 'exact duplication' box, lest we release an even worse intellectual property monster on the world.

wwweston 4y ago
> If this kind of abstract copyright regime of 'I had the idea first, and anyone who uses a derivative of my idea must pay me money!' is a very sillpery slope This is a cartoon conception of both existing copyright and the proposal I described. Copyright applies to works, not "ideas" (William Gibson doesn't have a copyright claim on the "idea" of a virtual reality but he does on _Neuromancer_ as a work). It gives creators incentives and a stake in their work by allowing for some degree of control in how works are used and especially how they're distributed. What I'm proposing isn't that different, and it's simple: People should be able to decide if their work is put into a training set, and what they get in return for it. That's it. No "flavor copyrights." No ownership of ideas. Just a claim on the creator's work and how it's used/ distributed. Specifically updated to cover a case that didn't exist 10 years ago, a case whose explicit intention is reproduction of not just one narrow aspect of the work but a combinatorially large number of aspects of the work (there's no other reason for adding it to the training set, that's the nature of these models). > it will become a spotify where each creator gets a sum total of $0.00000000001 per AI their media item was trained on "the artists will get such a small payout so we should make sure they get nothing" is quite the take. I think "artists should be able to negotiate what consideration they want in return for their work for a training set" is a better one. It's certainly better than "people collecting training data should be able to take anything they can get their digital hands on without any consideration other than possession." Maybe some artists would take a nanocent per use. Maybe they wouldn't. That should be up to them. Part of the reason why services like Spotify are so terrible economically is the way digital rights were assumed by labels and streamers often as extensions of older pre-digital conceptions without much in the way of negotiation by artists. The current moment is a chance to do better across an equally large (if not larger) technological shift.