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> Content creators are doing a purposeful slight of hand to confabulate "outputting copyrighted data" with "training on copyrighted data". I don't think so, I
by SahAssar 2y ago
> Content creators are doing a purposeful slight of hand to confabulate "outputting copyrighted data" with "training on copyrighted data".
I don't think so, I think it's usually argued as two different things.
The "training on copyrighted data" argument is usually that we never licensed this work for this sort of use and it is different enough from previously licensed uses that it should be treated differently.
The "outputting copyrighted data" argument is somewhat like your output is so similar as to constitute a (at least) partial copy.
Another argument is that licensed data is whitewashed by being run through a model. So you could have GPL licensed code that is open source run through a model and then output exactly the same but because it has been outputted by the model it is considered "cleaned" from the GPL restrictions. Clearly this output should still be GPL:ed.
> It's not illegal for me to read an NYT article and write my own summary of the article's contents on my blog. This has been true forever and has forever been a staple in new content creation.
What if I compress the NYT article with gzip? What if I build a LLM model that always replies with the full article within 99% accuracy? Where is the line?
This is not a technical issue, we need to decide on this just like we did with copyright, trademarks, etc. Regardless of what you think this is not a non-issue and we cant use the same rules as we did up until now unless we treat all ML systems as either duplication or humans and neither seems to solve the issues.
- freedomben 2y ago> Another argument is that licensed data is whitewashed by being run through a model. So you could have GPL licensed code that is open source run through a model and then output exactly the same but because it has been outputted by the model it is considered "cleaned" from the GPL restrictions. Clearly this output should still be GPL:ed. I don't think anybody is making that argument. The NY Times claims to have gotten ChatGPT to spit out NY Times articles verbatim but there is considerable doubt about that. Regardless, everyone agrees that a verbatim (or close to) copy is copyright violation, even OpenAI. Every serious model has taken steps to prevent that sort of thing.
- SahAssar 2y agoBoth chatGPT and copilot will happily spit out blocks of code without any form of license. When you say "Every serious model has taken steps to prevent that sort of thing" do you mean they are hiding it or really changing the training data?
- megaman821 2y agoHow much code is needed for copyright to take effect? A whole program, a file, a block, a line, a variable name? Since there isn't a legally accepted answer yet, I am not sure what can be done other than litigating cases where it goes too far.
- SahAssar 2y agoWould this example be over that line for you? https://x.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://x.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 I think most people would agree that function is copyrightable if recreated verbatim.