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The claim (which I don't personally agree with, but I'm trying to represent here in good faith) is that although the data is copyright, training models constitu

The claim (which I don't personally agree with, but I'm trying to represent here in good faith) is that although the data is copyright, training models constitutes "fair use" under US copyright law and therefore you're entitled to use copyright material for this. Fair to say that whether or not this is correct is pretty important to all the outstanding court cases on this matter.

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retrac 3y ago
I think there is actually a good argument that an AI model is transformative, and that training a model is therefore not infringing of the copyright. (An analogy: if you rolled dice to select words randomly from the Lord of the Rings and rearranged them into a poem, it's not infringing the Lord of the Rings even if in a sense, every word was taken from that book.) But you still have to get your hands on the copyrighted data legally. It might be legal to scan every book an institution owns, and train off it, so long as those scans are not distributed. But it is probably not legal to scrape copyrighted content off torrents - creating the copy to train with is infringing, even if the model's final product maybe isn't.
- seanhunter 3y ago
  Yes agreed, and transformative use itself also has limitations. You don't have carte blanche to use something just because you think it's transformative, for example the Lynn Goldsmith vs Andy Warhol Foundation case over the "Orange Prince" work. https://copyrightalliance.org/warhol-decision-reins-transformative-fair-use/ https://copyrightalliance.org/warhol-decision-reins-transfor...
- fsckboy 3y ago
  while there is a good argument that AI produces transformative outputs, it's refuted when the models are shown to regurgitate literal text, which they have. Then it just starts to look like a neural memorization agent, compressed storage algorithm, etc.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Definitely open to the idea, that couldn’t be the whole argument. I mean, my brain can output some quotes, but I’m not a compressed storage algorithm. Or at least I hope I’m not.
  - zettabomb 3y ago
    I've seen examples of this, but they're nearly always isolated, rather difficult to obtain, and not in fact exact copies. You need to specifically ask for an exact copy, and then attempt to defeat the safeguards the model has in place to prevent this, and hope that it was "memorized" - which for the record is considered to be a flaw in the model as it's a reduction in information density and capability, compared to if that "memory" was used for something else. Good models seek to reduce this as much as possible. With the size of the datasets involve (see OP) this feels more like an understandable and reasonable issue to have.
  - 7moritz7 3y ago
    This very rarely happens, usually when trying hard to get it to regurgitate, and I don't think it has ever happened for anything longer than 2 paragraphs, or at most a short article. Certainly not something like a book or even the whole issue of a newspaper.
    - fennecfoxy 3y ago
      Yup, exactly. Passages from GoT appear because they're frequently referenced across the Internet, including the multiple wiki style sites for GoT fans, not necessarily because the LLM is regurgitating whole-book content it was trained on.
jdiff 3y ago
That seems to fall apart quickly. Even if training could be considered fair use, surely just distributing the raw masses of copyrighted works can't be under any reasonable definition. Otherwise, why did TBP, KAT, and MegaUpload shut down if you could defeat copyright with sheer numbers?
- seanhunter 3y ago
  Indeed. Also in the US, whether or not something is fair use involves a four factor test[1] and two of the factors are the amount and substantiality of what's taken and the effect on any market. In this case, the amount is "everything" and the effect on the market is potentially very large for authors/publishers. [1] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
  - fsckboy 3y ago
    >two of the factors are the amount and substantiality of what's taken and the effect on any market books.google.com has been allowed to copy all the books they can lay their hands on, so long as they don't regurgitate them in full, so it's not really the taking, but any subsequent reproductions. And the effect on the market is insubstantial if the alternative wasn't going to be the equivalent sales.
    - ascorbic 3y ago
      You can download the whole dataset, so they're certainly able to regurgitate them in full.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Since when has TBP shut down?
  - RecycledEle 3y ago
    Some of the founders were convicted of crimes but the database and code are out there.
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retrac 3y ago

I think there is actually a good argument that an AI model is transformative, and that training a model is therefore not infringing of the copyright. (An analogy: if you rolled dice to select words randomly from the Lord of the Rings and rearranged them into a poem, it's not infringing the Lord of the Rings even if in a sense, every word was taken from that book.) But you still have to get your hands on the copyrighted data legally. It might be legal to scan every book an institution owns, and train off it, so long as those scans are not distributed. But it is probably not legal to scrape copyrighted content off torrents - creating the copy to train with is infringing, even if the model's final product maybe isn't.

seanhunter 3y ago
Yes agreed, and transformative use itself also has limitations. You don't have carte blanche to use something just because you think it's transformative, for example the Lynn Goldsmith vs Andy Warhol Foundation case over the "Orange Prince" work. https://copyrightalliance.org/warhol-decision-reins-transformative-fair-use/ https://copyrightalliance.org/warhol-decision-reins-transfor...
fsckboy 3y ago
while there is a good argument that AI produces transformative outputs, it's refuted when the models are shown to regurgitate literal text, which they have. Then it just starts to look like a neural memorization agent, compressed storage algorithm, etc.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Definitely open to the idea, that couldn’t be the whole argument. I mean, my brain can output some quotes, but I’m not a compressed storage algorithm. Or at least I hope I’m not.
- zettabomb 3y ago
  I've seen examples of this, but they're nearly always isolated, rather difficult to obtain, and not in fact exact copies. You need to specifically ask for an exact copy, and then attempt to defeat the safeguards the model has in place to prevent this, and hope that it was "memorized" - which for the record is considered to be a flaw in the model as it's a reduction in information density and capability, compared to if that "memory" was used for something else. Good models seek to reduce this as much as possible. With the size of the datasets involve (see OP) this feels more like an understandable and reasonable issue to have.
- 7moritz7 3y ago
  This very rarely happens, usually when trying hard to get it to regurgitate, and I don't think it has ever happened for anything longer than 2 paragraphs, or at most a short article. Certainly not something like a book or even the whole issue of a newspaper.
  - fennecfoxy 3y ago
    Yup, exactly. Passages from GoT appear because they're frequently referenced across the Internet, including the multiple wiki style sites for GoT fans, not necessarily because the LLM is regurgitating whole-book content it was trained on.

jdiff 3y ago

That seems to fall apart quickly. Even if training could be considered fair use, surely just distributing the raw masses of copyrighted works can't be under any reasonable definition. Otherwise, why did TBP, KAT, and MegaUpload shut down if you could defeat copyright with sheer numbers?

seanhunter 3y ago
Indeed. Also in the US, whether or not something is fair use involves a four factor test[1] and two of the factors are the amount and substantiality of what's taken and the effect on any market. In this case, the amount is "everything" and the effect on the market is potentially very large for authors/publishers. [1] https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/
- fsckboy 3y ago
  >two of the factors are the amount and substantiality of what's taken and the effect on any market books.google.com has been allowed to copy all the books they can lay their hands on, so long as they don't regurgitate them in full, so it's not really the taking, but any subsequent reproductions. And the effect on the market is insubstantial if the alternative wasn't going to be the equivalent sales.
  - ascorbic 3y ago
    You can download the whole dataset, so they're certainly able to regurgitate them in full.
justinclift 3y ago
Since when has TBP shut down?
- RecycledEle 3y ago
  Some of the founders were convicted of crimes but the database and code are out there.

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