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>They’ve clearly used and reproduced his content without a license. Where have they reproduced his content? You don't need a license for your fair use of some

>They’ve clearly used and reproduced his content without a license. Where have they reproduced his content? You don't need a license for your fair use of something. Can you walk me through how downloading a photo to your personal computer and studying it, perhaps to become a better artist is copyright infringement? Now let's apply that analogy to training a model, is the process of using a particular image to train a model, ultimately reconfiguring a bunch of weights in a matrix, so it "learns" whatever particulars it learns, copyright infringement? Is training a painting monkey that may paint something similar to a copyrighted painting, on a copyrighted painting, copyright infringement?

chii 3y ago
The unfortunate answer is that the courts have yet to decide what exactly "training an AI" means in the context of copyright. I personally do believe that training using copyrighted data is _not_ a violation of any existing copyright, but using the trained AI to reproduce and distribute something that an expert in the field would regard as a copy is a violation.
triceratops 3y ago
You're applying 20th century law and logic to 21st century technology. FWIW I do believe training a model is fundamentally different from training a human. The obvious analog is facial recognition, deemed privacy violating by laws and courts in multiple jurisdictions, vs a human doing the same thing manually.
- srslack 3y ago
  >The obvious analog is facial recognition, deemed privacy violating by laws and courts in multiple jurisdictions, vs a human doing the same thing manually. It was deemed "privacy violating" under specific privacy laws within those jurisdictions. i.e. go pass a law amending copyright law if you think so. there's no substantial reproduction here, in the context of stable diffusion, until there is, and then yeah in that instance it's probably a copyright violation, like a substantial reproduction made by a human would be. but training itself, probably not. but yes, there have been no rulings on it in this context.
  - triceratops 3y ago
    I'm aware privacy law applied to facial recognition, not copyright law. Nowhere did I imply that it was copyright law. I brought it up to illustrate that "activity + human" vs "activity + computer" can differ in legality for the same activity. > go pass a law amending copyright law if you think so I don't need to do anything. Let's see until one of these cases come to the courts. You're talking as though it's a foregone conclusion that they'll rule the way you think. I wouldn't be so sure myself.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > You're applying 20th century law and logic to 21st century technology. Until we pass 21st century laws, thats what applies.
  - triceratops 3y ago
    Or a court ruling.
dkuntz2 3y ago
Training an AI on an image would not be covered by fair use doctrine.
- Turing_Machine 3y ago
  > Training an AI on an image would not be covered by fair use doctrine. Do you have a link to a court decision to that effect? How, specifically, is "training an AI" different from "training a person" here?
  - anileated 3y ago
    It boggles my mind when people seriously claim that if there’s a word “learning” in ML then it justifies OpenAI et al. ignoring basic copyright. Training(2) software is to training(1) a human what firewall is to an actual wall made of fire, or what killing a process is to killing a human. The word is a synonym—more precisely, industry slang that happens to resemble a word used outside of the industry due to superficial similarity. So if you wonder how training(2) software is different from training(1) a person, first understand that it’s a different word that never signified the same concept. Subsequently, if you want to argue that training(1) should apply to software now, the onus would be on you to explain why and how so. You should be prepared to argue that software is sufficiently like a human—you know, that it understands ideas, has agency and free will, thinks like a human and has human-like consciousness, is capable not only of performing instructions given to it by its operator and act as a tool but to actually consider its actions and make own moral judgements, things like that. And if you come up with satisfactory evidence in favor of all that, and have grounds to believe some software is enough like a human that training(1) applies to it, then why are you fighting to allow its operator to ignore copyright—and not for more important things, such as to free this human-like being from abuse by its operator and grant it basic human rights? If we imagine that software is like a person enough that “training” it means the same thing as training a human, we should be prepared to acknowledge all the implications that come with that. The reality is that there are companies who would like us to both believe their software is human-like (so that we don’t sue them for rampant copyright abuse) but also not at all human (so that we don’t demand them to stop profiting from what would be slave labor). Naturally, if they pick one or the other they stand to lose from “a lot of money” to “entire business model”—but we should help them make that choice.

chii 3y ago

The unfortunate answer is that the courts have yet to decide what exactly "training an AI" means in the context of copyright. I personally do believe that training using copyrighted data is _not_ a violation of any existing copyright, but using the trained AI to reproduce and distribute something that an expert in the field would regard as a copy is a violation.

triceratops 3y ago

You're applying 20th century law and logic to 21st century technology. FWIW I do believe training a model is fundamentally different from training a human. The obvious analog is facial recognition, deemed privacy violating by laws and courts in multiple jurisdictions, vs a human doing the same thing manually.

srslack 3y ago
>The obvious analog is facial recognition, deemed privacy violating by laws and courts in multiple jurisdictions, vs a human doing the same thing manually. It was deemed "privacy violating" under specific privacy laws within those jurisdictions. i.e. go pass a law amending copyright law if you think so. there's no substantial reproduction here, in the context of stable diffusion, until there is, and then yeah in that instance it's probably a copyright violation, like a substantial reproduction made by a human would be. but training itself, probably not. but yes, there have been no rulings on it in this context.
- triceratops 3y ago
  I'm aware privacy law applied to facial recognition, not copyright law. Nowhere did I imply that it was copyright law. I brought it up to illustrate that "activity + human" vs "activity + computer" can differ in legality for the same activity. > go pass a law amending copyright law if you think so I don't need to do anything. Let's see until one of these cases come to the courts. You're talking as though it's a foregone conclusion that they'll rule the way you think. I wouldn't be so sure myself.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> You're applying 20th century law and logic to 21st century technology. Until we pass 21st century laws, thats what applies.
- triceratops 3y ago
  Or a court ruling.

dkuntz2 3y ago

Training an AI on an image would not be covered by fair use doctrine.

Turing_Machine 3y ago
> Training an AI on an image would not be covered by fair use doctrine. Do you have a link to a court decision to that effect? How, specifically, is "training an AI" different from "training a person" here?
- anileated 3y ago
  It boggles my mind when people seriously claim that if there’s a word “learning” in ML then it justifies OpenAI et al. ignoring basic copyright. Training(2) software is to training(1) a human what firewall is to an actual wall made of fire, or what killing a process is to killing a human. The word is a synonym—more precisely, industry slang that happens to resemble a word used outside of the industry due to superficial similarity. So if you wonder how training(2) software is different from training(1) a person, first understand that it’s a different word that never signified the same concept. Subsequently, if you want to argue that training(1) should apply to software now, the onus would be on you to explain why and how so. You should be prepared to argue that software is sufficiently like a human—you know, that it understands ideas, has agency and free will, thinks like a human and has human-like consciousness, is capable not only of performing instructions given to it by its operator and act as a tool but to actually consider its actions and make own moral judgements, things like that. And if you come up with satisfactory evidence in favor of all that, and have grounds to believe some software is enough like a human that training(1) applies to it, then why are you fighting to allow its operator to ignore copyright—and not for more important things, such as to free this human-like being from abuse by its operator and grant it basic human rights? If we imagine that software is like a person enough that “training” it means the same thing as training a human, we should be prepared to acknowledge all the implications that come with that. The reality is that there are companies who would like us to both believe their software is human-like (so that we don’t sue them for rampant copyright abuse) but also not at all human (so that we don’t demand them to stop profiting from what would be slave labor). Naturally, if they pick one or the other they stand to lose from “a lot of money” to “entire business model”—but we should help them make that choice.