7 ms·

It's interesting to compare two scenarios. The first is if you feed an LLM solely the works of a famous current author, say J.K Rowling, and ask it to create a

by bink 3y ago

It's interesting to compare two scenarios. The first is if you feed an LLM solely the works of a famous current author, say J.K Rowling, and ask it to create a new work in the style of her franchise. The second is if you include all of her works but also throw in every other book written in the last several years and ask it to create a work in the style of her franchise. Is the latter somehow "better" than the former? I'd personally consider the former to be a clear case of copyright violation while with the latter we don't really have a way of knowing how much of her previous works were included. I'd still lean towards the latter being a copyright violation, and it's where I think we are currently with services like ChatGPT.

30minAdayHN 3y ago
I have a question along the similar lines. Let's extend your analogy. Someone read all J.K Rowling books and created a work in that style. Would that be a copyright violation? I'm assuming not. In that case, is that difference here that it's not humanely possible to train on world's information compared to a single human getting inspired by specific works. And hence an algo doing that is violation?
- Retric 3y ago
  > Would that be a copyright violation? Quite possibly, it depends on what specifically is meant by style and the degree to which the new work is transformative.
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    Style is not copyrightable.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Again depends on what is meant by style. Another post in this thread suggested plot elements as part of style Aka “a wizardry school for preteens.” Sharing a few surface levels elements like that is fine, but if a one page description could equally well be used to describe both works you’re well over the line.
      - chii 3y ago
        > if a one page description could equally well be used to describe both works lots of disney animations could've been described this way. And it's because they took storylines from well known folk tales and adapted it. the idea of a teen wizard/witch going to a special school, fighting a villain, etc, doesn't seem to be copyrightable. While the russian ripoff version seems very similar and skirt the line between a copy and an original work, there's plenty of room where such a story could've been told and not be an infringement.
        Retric 3y ago
        Disney would be infringing on copyright except the works are in the public domain so it doesn’t matter. The Russian example was also ruled to be copyright infringement even though the main character was a girl and various other aspects of the story didn’t exactly match up.
  - williamcotton 3y ago
    How about Tonya Grotter, the Russian Harry Potter? https://www.amazon.com/Tanya-Grotter-i-pensne-Noya/dp/5699844414 https://www.amazon.com/Tanya-Grotter-i-pensne-Noya/dp/569984... You can’t copyright the idea of a wizardry school for preteens. You can’t copyright a style. You can definitely trademark your own name.
    - Retric 3y ago
      Edit: It was judged as copyright infringement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter A wizardry school for preteens isn’t on its own particularly unusual. But the question becomes how similar would the works be if the original was never published. You aren’t in the clear of a few paragraph book summery would apply equally well to both works. Barring the normal exceptions, Spaceballs is making reference to other works not just imitating them.
      - williamcotton 3y ago
        That Russian book series is a direct knock-off. Even the font looks similar. It’s also not a copyright violation because the question of how similar it is to the idea of Harry Potter is irrelevant with regards to copyright. If it was too similar and it was actively confusing consumers then it would be an issue of trademark. By making the protagonist a girl without glasses it does enough to differentiate itself that no reasonable confusion would ensue. As long as the books don’t contain verbatim copies of text from Harry Potter they are non-infringing!
        Retric 3y ago
        Except the book you’re referring to was infringing. “Despite its reputation in Russia and the many books it has spawned, the series is not available in English translation, because of the first book having been judged a breach of copyright.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter So, respectfully you are simply mistaken.
        3y ago
- rched 3y ago
  It's an interesting thought experiment but if the goal is to decide whether we should allow these types of AIs to be used for commercial purposes I think it's more helpful to ask a different question. If we had these LLMs 30 years ago would J.K Rowling's books ever have existed?
  - educaysean 3y ago
    Do you have a definitive answer to that question? Can you point to anyone who does? All your question does is give people an excuse to make up alternate history in order to argue whichever side of the argument they already believe. It serves little purpose in the dialogue of defining AI and human creativity.
  - antifa 3y ago
    You'd probably have 100+ equivalent works, 10 better works, and 100,000 inferior works.
mjevans 3y ago
Replace LLM with 'young author'. If you feed a 'young author' the works of a famous current author, E.G. Rowling, and ask them to write a new work in the style of that reference author... Or if you include the current N 'Best Sellers' and ask them to write whatever's popular. I'm not so convinced creativity is any more magical than a naturally evolved and refined version of what computers are starting to approach. Humans naturally add far more background, results filtering, and implicit selection parameters (personal biases / preferences). Maybe the correct line is somewhere around; tracing (direct copying) is bad, but freehand (from memory) is OK. However computers inherently have more perfect memory than humans; how precise is the detail from the source work? Is there a meaningful threshold where the memory of a work has decayed from a representation of the source work?
dllthomas 3y ago
While technologically unavailable (and maybe intractable) I've an impulse to say that in theory we could do something a little like Differential Privacy, where we look at the likelihood you got your output with the model you have vs the version of your model trained with (say) Rowling's work excluded.

by bink 3y ago

30minAdayHN 3y ago

I have a question along the similar lines. Let's extend your analogy. Someone read all J.K Rowling books and created a work in that style. Would that be a copyright violation? I'm assuming not. In that case, is that difference here that it's not humanely possible to train on world's information compared to a single human getting inspired by specific works. And hence an algo doing that is violation?

Retric 3y ago
> Would that be a copyright violation? Quite possibly, it depends on what specifically is meant by style and the degree to which the new work is transformative.
- Gigachad 3y ago
  Style is not copyrightable.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Again depends on what is meant by style. Another post in this thread suggested plot elements as part of style Aka “a wizardry school for preteens.” Sharing a few surface levels elements like that is fine, but if a one page description could equally well be used to describe both works you’re well over the line.
    - chii 3y ago
      > if a one page description could equally well be used to describe both works lots of disney animations could've been described this way. And it's because they took storylines from well known folk tales and adapted it. the idea of a teen wizard/witch going to a special school, fighting a villain, etc, doesn't seem to be copyrightable. While the russian ripoff version seems very similar and skirt the line between a copy and an original work, there's plenty of room where such a story could've been told and not be an infringement.
      - Retric 3y ago
        Disney would be infringing on copyright except the works are in the public domain so it doesn’t matter. The Russian example was also ruled to be copyright infringement even though the main character was a girl and various other aspects of the story didn’t exactly match up.
- williamcotton 3y ago
  How about Tonya Grotter, the Russian Harry Potter? https://www.amazon.com/Tanya-Grotter-i-pensne-Noya/dp/5699844414 https://www.amazon.com/Tanya-Grotter-i-pensne-Noya/dp/569984... You can’t copyright the idea of a wizardry school for preteens. You can’t copyright a style. You can definitely trademark your own name.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Edit: It was judged as copyright infringement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter A wizardry school for preteens isn’t on its own particularly unusual. But the question becomes how similar would the works be if the original was never published. You aren’t in the clear of a few paragraph book summery would apply equally well to both works. Barring the normal exceptions, Spaceballs is making reference to other works not just imitating them.
    - williamcotton 3y ago
      That Russian book series is a direct knock-off. Even the font looks similar. It’s also not a copyright violation because the question of how similar it is to the idea of Harry Potter is irrelevant with regards to copyright. If it was too similar and it was actively confusing consumers then it would be an issue of trademark. By making the protagonist a girl without glasses it does enough to differentiate itself that no reasonable confusion would ensue. As long as the books don’t contain verbatim copies of text from Harry Potter they are non-infringing!
      - Retric 3y ago
        Except the book you’re referring to was infringing. “Despite its reputation in Russia and the many books it has spawned, the series is not available in English translation, because of the first book having been judged a breach of copyright.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanya_Grotter So, respectfully you are simply mistaken.
        3y ago
rched 3y ago
It's an interesting thought experiment but if the goal is to decide whether we should allow these types of AIs to be used for commercial purposes I think it's more helpful to ask a different question. If we had these LLMs 30 years ago would J.K Rowling's books ever have existed?
- educaysean 3y ago
  Do you have a definitive answer to that question? Can you point to anyone who does? All your question does is give people an excuse to make up alternate history in order to argue whichever side of the argument they already believe. It serves little purpose in the dialogue of defining AI and human creativity.
- antifa 3y ago
  You'd probably have 100+ equivalent works, 10 better works, and 100,000 inferior works.

mjevans 3y ago

Replace LLM with 'young author'. If you feed a 'young author' the works of a famous current author, E.G. Rowling, and ask them to write a new work in the style of that reference author... Or if you include the current N 'Best Sellers' and ask them to write whatever's popular. I'm not so convinced creativity is any more magical than a naturally evolved and refined version of what computers are starting to approach. Humans naturally add far more background, results filtering, and implicit selection parameters (personal biases / preferences). Maybe the correct line is somewhere around; tracing (direct copying) is bad, but freehand (from memory) is OK. However computers inherently have more perfect memory than humans; how precise is the detail from the source work? Is there a meaningful threshold where the memory of a work has decayed from a representation of the source work?

dllthomas 3y ago

While technologically unavailable (and maybe intractable) I've an impulse to say that in theory we could do something a little like Differential Privacy, where we look at the likelihood you got your output with the model you have vs the version of your model trained with (say) Rowling's work excluded.