5 ms·

> Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. I see it differently. To me, if you post your work online as an artist, it's really there for everyone to vie

by ta8645 3y ago

> Regardless of legalities, that's wrong to me. I see it differently. To me, if you post your work online as an artist, it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by. As long as nobody copies it verbatim, don't think you've been hurt by any other usage. If another artist views it, and is inspired by it... so be it. If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done.

jsonjason 3y ago
> nobody copies it verbatim This is not really how copyright works. > an AI views it, and is inspired by it, This is a misleading anthropomorphization of how AI works.
tapoxi 3y ago
AI doesn't get inspired. It's not human. It adds everything about it to its endless stream of levers to pull, and if you pull the right ones, it will just give you the source verbatim as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing where it was just outputting unaltered copywritten NYT article text.
- PretzelPirate 3y ago
  > as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing I would be careful in asserting that it's proven until the evidence is heard in court and we have all the data.
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    You can look at the filing yourself. It is unambiguous.
    - ShamelessC 3y ago
      It’s unambiguous about repeating articles of NY times pieces with hallucinations interwoven occasionally. This isn’t nearly as strong of an argument.
- ta8645 3y ago
  That's a matter of perspective. AI's do not make a copy of the source material. It very much just adjusts their internal weights, which from a broadminded perspective, can be seen as simple inspiration, and not copying. Of course, just like a human artist, it could probably closely approximate the source material if it wanted to, but it would still be its own approximation, not an exact duplicate. As for plagiarism, we all have to be careful to rephrase things we've read elsewhere, and perhaps AI's need to be trained to do this a bit better... but it doesn't change the underlying fact that they're learning from the text they read, not storing a verbatim copy (at least, no more so than a human reader with a good memory)
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    Based on the comment you replied to, it seems they are indeed producing verbatim copies.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      > Based on the comment you replied to, it seems they are indeed producing verbatim copies. Well i'll leave it to the legal system to decide if that's true. But in any case, that's no different from a human with a photographic memory doing the same thing after reading a paragraph. We don't blame them for their superior memory, or being inspired by the knowledge. We don't claim they've violated copyright because their memory contains an exact copy of what they read. We may still demand that they avoid reproducing the exact words they've read, even though they are capable of it -- which is fine. We can demand the same of AI's. All I object to, is the idea that a smart AI, with a great memory is guilty of something just by reading or viewing content that was willingingly shared online.
      - kevingadd 3y ago
        If I tell you water is wet and the sky is blue, will you be waiting for a court case to grind through the appeals process on that as well? The examples in the filing were unambiguous. You can go look it up and see them, they were also cited in all the news articles I saw about it. The AI regurgitated many paragraphs of text with very, very few small modifications.
- CrimsonRain 3y ago
  If you pull the right levers, you can also copy the NYT article fully.
  - tapoxi 3y ago
    Yeah and that's copyright infringement. That's why if you're reverse engineering something it needs to be done in a clean room environment, your prior exposure to the copywritten material poisons the well for any derivative you create. This extends to music as well, if someone hears a song and is inspired by that in their work, the original artist gets credit.
    - ta8645 3y ago
      > This extends to music as well, if someone hears a song and is inspired by that in their work, the original artist gets credit. That's only true in a very narrow set of circumstances. Imagine the case where someone listens to 10,000 songs, and then takes the sum total of that experience and writes their own. There's no credit given to the inspiration that each of those 10,000 songs gave. And that is in fact much closer to what AI is currently doing.
      - tapoxi 3y ago
        If we're discussing the current situation, where ChatGPT is outputting entire articles of NYT copyrighted content, then it certainly matches say, Bittersweet Symphony containing a small sample of a Rolling Stones song resulting in the Stones getting credit for the entire work.
        ta8645 3y ago
        There is a rather vibrant culture of _human_ remix artists who sample existing music and generate something completely new. It is still an open question of how long a sample they can use before it requires licensing: https://www.ajschwartzlaw.com/can-i-use-that-part-2-remix-culture-the-internet-and-copyright-law/ https://www.ajschwartzlaw.com/can-i-use-that-part-2-remix-cu... But all of this, doesn't have much to do with whether an AI should be allowed to consume public media -- even if we agree they need to do a better job about avoiding verbatim reconstruction when prompted. Edit: I wasn't able to find the Lawrence Lessig talk I wanted to link, but here's a quite old one that makes some of the same points: https://youtu.be/X8ULxxgjBuI https://youtu.be/X8ULxxgjBuI
- imgabe 3y ago
  ...and if you ask a human artist to exactly reproduce an artwork, that is copyright infringment, or forgery. I don't see how this is any different? The person using the AI to make exact replicas would be the one committing the copyright infringement, not the AI.
jmartrican 3y ago
> If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. You had me till that^ line. In your example if "inspired" human start competing with you, then there is harm. If the inspired human is replaced by an AI, then it also harms. By harm I am referring to competition. So instead of saying "no harm done", then maybe its more accurate to say "same harm as a other humans being inspired by your work".
- ta8645 3y ago
  > So instead of saying "no harm done", then maybe its more accurate to say "same harm as a other humans being inspired by your work". I don't disagree with you. But then that is a completely different issue, and has nothing specifically to do with AI, but rather the tradeoff between the benefits of releasing your work to the public, and the potential competition it might inspire.
romwell 3y ago
> If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. There's such thing as consent, I hope you've heard of it. No artist whose work was used to train the AIs consented to such use. Particularly if they released their work online before generative AI was a possibility. >it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by Generative AI model is not "everyone". It's a model, a combination of data that goes into it. It's a thing. A product. A derivative work, to be specific, made by the person who trained it. >If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. Such a romantic notion! But the same metric, a photocopy machine is an auteur that gets inspired by the work that it happens to stumble into to produce its own original art. No. The AI doesn't "view" the work, it has no agency. The human that trains the model does. And that human is the one that is ripping the artist off. The AI, as many people said, is just a tool. It doesn't suddenly turn into a person for copyright purposes. It still remains a tool for people who train the models. A tool to rip off others' intellectual property, in the case we're discussing.
- ta8645 3y ago
  > There's such thing as consent. When you release something into the world, you have to accept that things beyond your control will engage with it. When you walk outside, down the street, you consent to being in public, and being recorded by video cameras, whether you like it or not. Even if a new 3D camera you don't know about exists and is recording you in ways you don't understand. And in the same way, when you release something on the internet, it is there essentially forever. If you imagine that you get a "do-over" when the world changes in ways you didn't anticipate -- you're wrong. Nobody should feel entitled to such a reset. > And that human is the one that is ripping the artist off. Nobody is being ripped off. > The AI, as many people said, is just a tool People said the same thing about slaves. They aren't real people, worthy of rights. They were compared to animals, the same way you compared AI to a photocopier. Someday, this human self-obsession and self-importance against silicon based lives, will be seen in the same light, and artificial intelligences will be granted personhood. We should start protecting their rights in law today. Please don't be a bigot.
  - mftrhu 3y ago

by ta8645 3y ago

jsonjason 3y ago

> nobody copies it verbatim This is not really how copyright works. > an AI views it, and is inspired by it, This is a misleading anthropomorphization of how AI works.

tapoxi 3y ago

AI doesn't get inspired. It's not human. It adds everything about it to its endless stream of levers to pull, and if you pull the right ones, it will just give you the source verbatim as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing where it was just outputting unaltered copywritten NYT article text.

PretzelPirate 3y ago
> as proven by the NYT lawsuit filing I would be careful in asserting that it's proven until the evidence is heard in court and we have all the data.
- kevingadd 3y ago
  You can look at the filing yourself. It is unambiguous.
  - ShamelessC 3y ago
    It’s unambiguous about repeating articles of NY times pieces with hallucinations interwoven occasionally. This isn’t nearly as strong of an argument.
ta8645 3y ago
That's a matter of perspective. AI's do not make a copy of the source material. It very much just adjusts their internal weights, which from a broadminded perspective, can be seen as simple inspiration, and not copying. Of course, just like a human artist, it could probably closely approximate the source material if it wanted to, but it would still be its own approximation, not an exact duplicate. As for plagiarism, we all have to be careful to rephrase things we've read elsewhere, and perhaps AI's need to be trained to do this a bit better... but it doesn't change the underlying fact that they're learning from the text they read, not storing a verbatim copy (at least, no more so than a human reader with a good memory)
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  Based on the comment you replied to, it seems they are indeed producing verbatim copies.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    > Based on the comment you replied to, it seems they are indeed producing verbatim copies. Well i'll leave it to the legal system to decide if that's true. But in any case, that's no different from a human with a photographic memory doing the same thing after reading a paragraph. We don't blame them for their superior memory, or being inspired by the knowledge. We don't claim they've violated copyright because their memory contains an exact copy of what they read. We may still demand that they avoid reproducing the exact words they've read, even though they are capable of it -- which is fine. We can demand the same of AI's. All I object to, is the idea that a smart AI, with a great memory is guilty of something just by reading or viewing content that was willingingly shared online.
    - kevingadd 3y ago
      If I tell you water is wet and the sky is blue, will you be waiting for a court case to grind through the appeals process on that as well? The examples in the filing were unambiguous. You can go look it up and see them, they were also cited in all the news articles I saw about it. The AI regurgitated many paragraphs of text with very, very few small modifications.
CrimsonRain 3y ago
If you pull the right levers, you can also copy the NYT article fully.
- tapoxi 3y ago
  Yeah and that's copyright infringement. That's why if you're reverse engineering something it needs to be done in a clean room environment, your prior exposure to the copywritten material poisons the well for any derivative you create. This extends to music as well, if someone hears a song and is inspired by that in their work, the original artist gets credit.
  - ta8645 3y ago
    > This extends to music as well, if someone hears a song and is inspired by that in their work, the original artist gets credit. That's only true in a very narrow set of circumstances. Imagine the case where someone listens to 10,000 songs, and then takes the sum total of that experience and writes their own. There's no credit given to the inspiration that each of those 10,000 songs gave. And that is in fact much closer to what AI is currently doing.
    - tapoxi 3y ago
      If we're discussing the current situation, where ChatGPT is outputting entire articles of NYT copyrighted content, then it certainly matches say, Bittersweet Symphony containing a small sample of a Rolling Stones song resulting in the Stones getting credit for the entire work.
      - ta8645 3y ago
        There is a rather vibrant culture of _human_ remix artists who sample existing music and generate something completely new. It is still an open question of how long a sample they can use before it requires licensing: https://www.ajschwartzlaw.com/can-i-use-that-part-2-remix-culture-the-internet-and-copyright-law/ https://www.ajschwartzlaw.com/can-i-use-that-part-2-remix-cu... But all of this, doesn't have much to do with whether an AI should be allowed to consume public media -- even if we agree they need to do a better job about avoiding verbatim reconstruction when prompted. Edit: I wasn't able to find the Lawrence Lessig talk I wanted to link, but here's a quite old one that makes some of the same points: https://youtu.be/X8ULxxgjBuI https://youtu.be/X8ULxxgjBuI
imgabe 3y ago
...and if you ask a human artist to exactly reproduce an artwork, that is copyright infringment, or forgery. I don't see how this is any different? The person using the AI to make exact replicas would be the one committing the copyright infringement, not the AI.

jmartrican 3y ago

> If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. You had me till that^ line. In your example if "inspired" human start competing with you, then there is harm. If the inspired human is replaced by an AI, then it also harms. By harm I am referring to competition. So instead of saying "no harm done", then maybe its more accurate to say "same harm as a other humans being inspired by your work".

ta8645 3y ago
> So instead of saying "no harm done", then maybe its more accurate to say "same harm as a other humans being inspired by your work". I don't disagree with you. But then that is a completely different issue, and has nothing specifically to do with AI, but rather the tradeoff between the benefits of releasing your work to the public, and the potential competition it might inspire.

romwell 3y ago

> If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. There's such thing as consent, I hope you've heard of it. No artist whose work was used to train the AIs consented to such use. Particularly if they released their work online before generative AI was a possibility. >it's really there for everyone to view and be inspired by Generative AI model is not "everyone". It's a model, a combination of data that goes into it. It's a thing. A product. A derivative work, to be specific, made by the person who trained it. >If an AI views it, and is inspired by it, again, no harm done. Such a romantic notion! But the same metric, a photocopy machine is an auteur that gets inspired by the work that it happens to stumble into to produce its own original art. No. The AI doesn't "view" the work, it has no agency. The human that trains the model does. And that human is the one that is ripping the artist off. The AI, as many people said, is just a tool. It doesn't suddenly turn into a person for copyright purposes. It still remains a tool for people who train the models. A tool to rip off others' intellectual property, in the case we're discussing.

ta8645 3y ago
> There's such thing as consent. When you release something into the world, you have to accept that things beyond your control will engage with it. When you walk outside, down the street, you consent to being in public, and being recorded by video cameras, whether you like it or not. Even if a new 3D camera you don't know about exists and is recording you in ways you don't understand. And in the same way, when you release something on the internet, it is there essentially forever. If you imagine that you get a "do-over" when the world changes in ways you didn't anticipate -- you're wrong. Nobody should feel entitled to such a reset. > And that human is the one that is ripping the artist off. Nobody is being ripped off. > The AI, as many people said, is just a tool People said the same thing about slaves. They aren't real people, worthy of rights. They were compared to animals, the same way you compared AI to a photocopier. Someday, this human self-obsession and self-importance against silicon based lives, will be seen in the same light, and artificial intelligences will be granted personhood. We should start protecting their rights in law today. Please don't be a bigot.
- mftrhu 3y ago