3 ms·

I wonder if the GPLv4 will be coming out soon with an anti-AI-training clause (unless your output model and its outputs are also GPLv4, of course).

cxr 4y ago
People keep bringing this up. It's not as straightforward as a clause that says "you can't use this to train AI" (which is what I suspect many people think). Licensing operates on a continuum of permissiveness. They can only relax the restrictions that you as a creator are given by default. You can't write a copyright license that adds them. You could write a legal instrument that compels and prohibits certain behavior(s), but at that point you're talking about a contract. (And there's no way to coerce anyone to agree with the contract.) Harry Potter has even more restrictions than the GPL or any other open source license. It's "All Rights Reserved—it enjoys the maximum protections that a work can. And yet it would still be possible feed it into an AI model, even if all of Rowling, Bloomsbury, and Scholastic didn't want you to. They don't get a say in that. Nor do open source software developers in their works which selectively abandon some of the protections that Rowling reserves for herself and her business partners. The only real viable path to achieve this using an IP license alone would be a React PATENTS-like termination clause—if your company engages in any kind of AI training that uses this project as an input, then your license to make copies (including distributing modified copies) under the ordinary terms are revoked, along with revoking permission for a huge swathe of other free/open source software owned by a bunch of other signatories, too. This is, of course, contingent upon the ability to freely copy and modify a given set of works being appealing enough to get people to abstain from the lure of building AI models and offering services based on them.
- ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
  I amend my wondering to the prepend the GPL thing with "I wonder how long it will take disney et al to make it illegal to train AI with their stuff" which then opens that door to the GPL

cxr 4y ago

People keep bringing this up. It's not as straightforward as a clause that says "you can't use this to train AI" (which is what I suspect many people think). Licensing operates on a continuum of permissiveness. They can only relax the restrictions that you as a creator are given by default. You can't write a copyright license that adds them. You could write a legal instrument that compels and prohibits certain behavior(s), but at that point you're talking about a contract. (And there's no way to coerce anyone to agree with the contract.) Harry Potter has even more restrictions than the GPL or any other open source license. It's "All Rights Reserved—it enjoys the maximum protections that a work can. And yet it would still be possible feed it into an AI model, even if all of Rowling, Bloomsbury, and Scholastic didn't want you to. They don't get a say in that. Nor do open source software developers in their works which selectively abandon some of the protections that Rowling reserves for herself and her business partners. The only real viable path to achieve this using an IP license alone would be a React PATENTS-like termination clause—if your company engages in any kind of AI training that uses this project as an input, then your license to make copies (including distributing modified copies) under the ordinary terms are revoked, along with revoking permission for a huge swathe of other free/open source software owned by a bunch of other signatories, too. This is, of course, contingent upon the ability to freely copy and modify a given set of works being appealing enough to get people to abstain from the lure of building AI models and offering services based on them.

ye-olde-sysrq 4y ago
I amend my wondering to the prepend the GPL thing with "I wonder how long it will take disney et al to make it illegal to train AI with their stuff" which then opens that door to the GPL