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Do we even know if model weights are copyrightable or not?
by jacooper 4y ago
Do we even know if model weights are copyrightable or not?
- sebzim4500 4y agoNo but unless you enjoy being sued by Meta you have to act as if they are.
- janmo 4y agoI was asking myself the same question and am 99% sure it isn't protected by IP laws. It is another story for the training data and the source code used to run the model.
- Invictus0 4y agoA JPG is copyrightable and that's just an array of numbers. Model weights seem pretty similar as a class.
- AustinDev 4y agoCouldn't you just transform the weights in some predictable way and then untransform them before use in runtime? The weights at rest would be completely distinct from the meta weights.
- dougmwne 4y agoIt's not the JPG data you can copyright, but the recognisable image it produces. Every time you re-save or resize the image, the data changes, but the recognizable image remains. It's not clear how this process applies to model weights. Once you run another training epoch on them, the data has changed. What is the essential copyrightable, trademarkable or patentable thing that remains? A legally untested question for sure.
- jacooper 4y agoBut the data inside the jpg isn't generated by a machine, model weights are.
- MacsHeadroom 4y agoIt depends on how the JPG is made. Some JPGs are not copy writable, like that picture a monkey took of itself. Model weights are probably (legally) more like a selfie of a monkey than a photographer's photo.