3 ms·

It's not even a question of "fair use" because OpenAI isn't providing anybody a copy. Probability models really just aren't copyrightable to begin with.

mike_hearn 3y ago
Fair use also covers generating derived works, and arguably the AI is a derived work.
- bandrami 3y ago
  That would be hard to argue. You can't point to a sequence of words that's in the original that was copied into the OpenAI output.
  - mike_hearn 3y ago
    That's not how derivative works are defined. For example, translations to other languages or extensive summarizations (condensations) count as derivative works even though no words are directly copied.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> It’s not even a question of “fair use” because OpenAI isn’t providing anybody a copy “Fair Use” can apply to essentially any of the exclusive rights under copyright, including making (with or without distributing) a copy or derivative work. > Probability models really just aren’t copyrightable to begin with. “Probability models” that are built from copyrightable works either: (1) have a sufficient human creative input to be copyrightable on its own (in which caee it still may infringe copyrights applicable to its source material as a derivative work), or (2) do not have a sufficient human creative input to be copyrightable, and thus are a form of mechanical copy of their data from which they are developed (which, to the extent it either is, in aggregate, a copyrighted work, and/or contains copies of other copyrighted works, is protected by one or more copyrights, which do not cease to apply to the mechanical copy, and which an unlicensed mechanical copy would violate unless it fell into an exception like Fair Use.)
- bandrami 3y ago
  But OpenAI is neither copying nor deriving a work. Style (which can be described as a probability model) is not copyrightable. You're halfway there with #2. The output is not copyrightable, but unless you can actually point to a sequence of words from the original it can't be infringing.
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    > But OpenAI is neither copying nor deriving a work. They absolutely are copying in the course of training the model, and they are doing something that often looks a lot like copying when producing output with the model. > Style (which can be described as a probability model) is not copyrightable. Style is not all that can be described in an LLM's "probability model", otherwise LLM models would never be able to reproduce content from the training set, which they do. > The output is not copyrightable, but unless you can actually point to a sequence of words from the original it can’t be infringing. While verbatim copying (“a sequence of words from the original”) is infringing, mechanical copying with a mechanical substitution filter (even a wickedly complex one) is also copying, and violates copyright. And ChatGPT is quite capable of producing verbatim text from its training set.
    - bandrami 3y ago
      > They absolutely are copying in the course of training the model Only in the sense that a Cisco router is copying in the course of sending me the article, which we've all agreed doesn't count as infringement. The bigger problem is that the plaintiff has to show it is more likely than not that that sequence of words came from their text and not some other source, which is going to be obscenely difficult. > And ChatGPT is quite capable of producing verbatim text from its training set. Granted, and then the copyright holder could sue for infringement at that point. Exactly whom he should sue is a more difficult question. Look, I get it: you want copyright to allow authors to say "you can't do that with my work"; I'm sympathetic, but it just doesn't give authors that power.
      - 3y ago

mike_hearn 3y ago

Fair use also covers generating derived works, and arguably the AI is a derived work.

bandrami 3y ago
That would be hard to argue. You can't point to a sequence of words that's in the original that was copied into the OpenAI output.
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  That's not how derivative works are defined. For example, translations to other languages or extensive summarizations (condensations) count as derivative works even though no words are directly copied.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> It’s not even a question of “fair use” because OpenAI isn’t providing anybody a copy “Fair Use” can apply to essentially any of the exclusive rights under copyright, including making (with or without distributing) a copy or derivative work. > Probability models really just aren’t copyrightable to begin with. “Probability models” that are built from copyrightable works either: (1) have a sufficient human creative input to be copyrightable on its own (in which caee it still may infringe copyrights applicable to its source material as a derivative work), or (2) do not have a sufficient human creative input to be copyrightable, and thus are a form of mechanical copy of their data from which they are developed (which, to the extent it either is, in aggregate, a copyrighted work, and/or contains copies of other copyrighted works, is protected by one or more copyrights, which do not cease to apply to the mechanical copy, and which an unlicensed mechanical copy would violate unless it fell into an exception like Fair Use.)

bandrami 3y ago
But OpenAI is neither copying nor deriving a work. Style (which can be described as a probability model) is not copyrightable. You're halfway there with #2. The output is not copyrightable, but unless you can actually point to a sequence of words from the original it can't be infringing.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > But OpenAI is neither copying nor deriving a work. They absolutely are copying in the course of training the model, and they are doing something that often looks a lot like copying when producing output with the model. > Style (which can be described as a probability model) is not copyrightable. Style is not all that can be described in an LLM's "probability model", otherwise LLM models would never be able to reproduce content from the training set, which they do. > The output is not copyrightable, but unless you can actually point to a sequence of words from the original it can’t be infringing. While verbatim copying (“a sequence of words from the original”) is infringing, mechanical copying with a mechanical substitution filter (even a wickedly complex one) is also copying, and violates copyright. And ChatGPT is quite capable of producing verbatim text from its training set.
  - bandrami 3y ago
    > They absolutely are copying in the course of training the model Only in the sense that a Cisco router is copying in the course of sending me the article, which we've all agreed doesn't count as infringement. The bigger problem is that the plaintiff has to show it is more likely than not that that sequence of words came from their text and not some other source, which is going to be obscenely difficult. > And ChatGPT is quite capable of producing verbatim text from its training set. Granted, and then the copyright holder could sue for infringement at that point. Exactly whom he should sue is a more difficult question. Look, I get it: you want copyright to allow authors to say "you can't do that with my work"; I'm sympathetic, but it just doesn't give authors that power.
    - 3y ago