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givesomefucks ,

In evidence for the suit against OpenAI, the plaintiffs claim ChatGPT violates copyright law by producing a “derivative” version of copyrighted work when prompted to summarize the source.

Both filings make a broader case against AI, claiming that by definition, the models are a risk to the Copyright Act because they are trained on huge datasets that contain potentially copyrighted information

They’ve got a point.

If you ask AI to summarize something, it needs to know what it’s summarizing. Reading other summaries might be legal, but then why not just read those summaries first?

If the AI “reads” the work first, then it would have needed to pay for it. And how do you deal with that? Is a chatbot treated like one user? Or does it need to pay for a copy for each human that asks for a summary?

I think if they’d have paid for a single ebbok Library subscription they’d be fine. However the article says they used pirate libraries so it could read anything on the fly.

Pointing an AI at pirated media is going to be hard to defend in court. And a class action full of authors and celebrities isn’t going to be a cakewalk. They’ve got a lot of money to fight, and have lots of contacts for copyright laws. I’m sure all the publishers are pissed too.

Everyone is going after AI money these days, this seems like the rare case where it’s justified

fazey_o0o ,

“It was like this when I got it”

limeaide ,

Can the sources where ChatGPT got it’s information from be traced? What if it got the information from other summaries?

I think the hardest thing for these companies will be validating the information their AI is using. I can see an encyclopedia-like industry popping up over the next couple years.

Btw I know very little about this topic but I find it fascinating

rainroar ,

Yes! They publish the data sources and where they got everything from. Diffusers (stable diffusion/midjoirny etc) and GPT both use tons of data that was taken in ways that likely violate that data’s usage agreement.

Imo they deserve whatever lawsuits they have coming.

radarsat1 ,

likely violate that data’s usage agreement.

It doesn’t seem to be too common for books to include specific clauses or EULAs that prohibit their use as data in machine learning systems. I’m curious if there are really any aspects that cover this without it being explicitly mentioned. I guess we’ll find out.

rainroar ,

I think with a book your standard digital license / copyright would forbid it, would it not?

radarsat1 ,

Maybe. I’m interested in the specifics.

beejjorgensen ,
@beejjorgensen@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

It depends on if the summary is an infringing derivative work, doesn’t it? Wikipedia is full of summaries, for example, and it’s not violating copyright.

If they illegally downloaded the works, that feels like a standalone issue to me, not having anything to do with AI.

TWeaK ,

Wikipedia is a non profit whose primary purpose is education. ChatGPT is a business venture.

Rivalarrival ,

A book review published in a newspaper is a commercial venture for the purpose of selling ads. The commercial aspect doesn’t make the review an infringement.

A summary is a “Transformative Derivation”. It is a related work, created for a fundamentally different purpose. It is a discussion about the work, not a copy of the work. Transformative derivations are not infringements, even where they are specifically intended to be used for commercial purposes.

TWeaK ,

A book review is most likely critical, and thus falls under fair use.

A summary is not critical, so would not have a fair use exemption. I would also disagree that it is transformative. That argument is about work that is so different to the original that it must be considered a separate piece (eg new music that uses a sample from old music). A summary is inherently not transformative, because it is merely a shortened version of the original - the ideas expressed are the same.

Rivalarrival ,

Transformative doesn’t mean that the idea is different. It means the purpose for expressing the idea is different. Informing an individual or the general public of the general idea presented in a book is not an infringement. If it were, every book report every student is ever asked to write would be an infringement.

TWeaK ,

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformative_use

Transformativeness is a characteristic of such derivative works that makes them transcend, or place in a new light, the underlying works on which they are based.

A summary would not place the original work in a new light. A summary is the same work but shorter. A summary would be infringement.

Student book reports are for educational purposes, which has its own specific exemption under fair use. As does work which is critical of the original, along with news. A critical piece, for example, is transformative because it introduces new ideas, talking about the work and framing it in new ways.

AI meets none of these exemptions with a summary. It’s debatable whether it even could meet these exemptions in the way that it functions.

Rivalarrival ,

Student book reports are for educational purposes, which has its own specific exemption under fair use. As does work which is critical of the original, along with news. A critical piece, for example, is transformative because it introduces new ideas, talking about the work and framing it in new ways.

You’re forgetting two other important categories of fair use. Paste that student’s book report in a newspaper, and it is no longer “educational”, but it is still “news reporting”. Paste it in response to an individual asking about the work, and again, it is no longer educational, but it is still “commentary”.

Even if these two categories of fair use were not specifically included in copyright law, they would naturally arises from the right to free speech. Making a summary subject to the original copyright would make it unlawful for anyone to even discuss the work at all.

TWeaK ,

You’re really stretching to try and make your arguments seem correct.

Rivalarrival ,

Nah, rightsholder organizations have been spreading their FUD propaganda since the advent of the cassette tape and VHS. They have tried, but they have never won a case against someone solely for receiving and saving a work. Downloading is not a crime in and of itself. The criminal act is uploading.

TWeaK ,

None of it is a crime unless you’re doing it for profit - commercial copyright infringement. Regular copyright infringement is a civil offense, which is why it’s up to the rightsholder to prosecute a claim. Any claim will have cost but also uncertainty, hence why if the value of the claim is low they won’t bother - even if the case is strong - to avoid the risk of losing over some small procedural matter. Also typically in the US you don’t get awarded costs, so if your claim isn’t going to meet your costs it will always be a net loss.

Downloading most definitely is the civil offense of copyright infringement. It’s just not worth prosecuting - the most they could claim for is the cost of a single download, which is far less than the cost of going to court.

To argue otherwise is to claim you can legally take whatever you like without paying for it.

Rivalarrival ,

To argue otherwise is to claim you can legally take whatever you like without paying for it.

Do you not understand the fundamental purpose of copyright law? It is not to ensure that artists get paid. The purpose is “To promote the progress of science and useful arts”. The purpose is to expand the depth and breadth of public knowledge; to push ideas into the public domain, where they can be used by anyone.

You’re getting so hung up on the method of copyright that you’re ignoring its purpose. Yes, you can legally receive whatever you like without paying for it. The trick is in finding someone willing to send it to you. That sender might be prohibited from sending it, and you might be prohibited from sending it to others, but there is nothing in copyright law that prohibits you from receiving it.

The value of winning a single case of infringement against a downloader is the precedent it sets. The costs associated with that first case are miniscule relative to the benefits. Winning that first case would allow rightsholders to truly annihilate P2P platforms. With that one case as precedent, they could credibly demand billions in settlements from the American public.

No, that “not worth the cost to prosecute” claim is complete and total horseshit. The reality is that every time they have tried to target downloaders, their cases have been dismissed long before going to trial, because they can’t show how a downloader runs afoul of copyright law. The law targets distribution, not reception.

TWeaK ,

Yes, you can legally receive whatever you like without paying for it.

A quick search provides plenty of links to say you’re wrong. In particular with respect to downloading from the internet, which is significantly different to receiving a physical item.

When you download, you create a copy on your computer. You read a file from a server, then write it to your local storage.

Sure, maybe buying a pirated CD may be legal for the buyer, but copying that CD would not be - and like I say, there is the argument that playing the CD is a form of copying that is only permitted with a license from the rightsholder. However downloading is regarded as a form of copying that is only permissible with permission from the rightsholder.

You are trying to justify something that no reasonable person - let alone a court - would justify.

Rivalarrival ,

A quick search provides plenty of links…

None of those links are to federal statutes. Some are to government sites, but not to the statutes. The statutes do not support your claims.

When you download, you create a copy on your computer.

VHS and cassette recordings of broadcast or pirate transmissions also end up with a copy of the work in the possession of the receiver. Both are legal. It is not legal to share or retransmit those recordings, but those recordings are themselves legal to create and consume.

You read a file from a server,

No. You’re radically oversimplifying the scenario. You’re ignoring the second party involved.

P2P downloading is like calling up a pirate radio station and asking them to play a song. You set up your recording device, and wait for them to play it… The recording you make is legal. The act of requesting the song does not obligate the station to play it. They can ignore your request, or play it immediately, or play it three nights later. Their choice to play it is theirs alone. Their playing it is the infringement.

P2P downloading, your computer sends a request to the server. Depending on how the server is configured by the uploader and the resources available to it, it may or may not begin sending the requested work.

Rivalarrival ,

If the AI “reads” the work first, then it would have needed to pay for it

That’s not actually true. Copyright applies to distribution, not consumption. You violate no law when I create an unauthorized copy of a work, and you read that copy. Copyright law prohibits you from distributing further copies, but it does not prohibit you from possessing the copy I provided you, nor are you prohibited from speaking about the copy you have acquired.

Unless the AI is regurgitating substantial parts of the original work, it’s output is a “transformative derivation”, which is not subject to the protections of the original copyright. The AI is doing what English teachers ask of every school-age child: create a book report.

lobelia581 ,

There was still copyright infringement because the company probably downloaded the text (which created another copy) and modified it (alteration is also protected by copyright) before using it as training data. If you write an original novel and admit that you had pirated a bunch of novels to use for reference, those novels were still downloaded illegally even if you’ve deleted them by now. The AI isn’t copyright infringement itself, it’s proof that copyright infringement has happened.

But personally I don’t think the actual laws will matter so much as which side has the better case for why they will lead to more innovation and growth for the economy.

Rivalarrival ,

There was still copyright infringement because the company probably downloaded the text (which created another copy)

Sure, someone likely infringed on copyright for that copy to be created, but the person/entity committing that infringement is the sender, not the receiver. The uploader is the infringing party, not the downloader.

If you write an original novel and admit that you had pirated a bunch of novels to use for reference, those novels were still downloaded illegally even if you’ve deleted them by now.

They were uploaded illegally. The people who distributed those copies to me have infringed on copyright, sure. My receiving those copies does not constitute infringement. Uploading is the illegal act, not downloading.

My work does not violate copyright, unless I use a substantial part of the other works. But, if I used substantial parts of those works, my work would be some sort of “derivation” and not the “original novel” you declared it. (Many types of derivation fall within “fair use” and do not constitute infringement.)

Whether I delete the works or not is entirely irrelevant. I am prohibited from creating and distributing additional copies, but I am not prohibited from receiving, possessing, or consuming an unauthorized copy.

lobelia581 ,

The uploader is the infringing party, not the downloader.

an exclusive right of the copyright holder is the right to duplicate their work. downloading IS illegal because you’re creating an unauthorized duplicate of the work on your machine. your duplicate is distinct from the duplicate that someone else had created and uploaded. it’s just very hard to get caught downloading, and it’s not very cost effective for companies to pursue since they would only stop one person. that’s why most companies like the RIAA targeted torrents for their lawsuits, because they could easily see the ip addresses (which is why you should always use a vpn when torrenting) and because they could shut down uploaders. but downloading itself is still very illegal

My work does not violate copyright, unless I use a substantial part of the other works.

like I said, the AI is not a violation (probably, unless the courts later disagree), it’s proof that unauthorized duplication of copyrighted works has occurred, and that is illegal

Rivalarrival ,

You cannot create a copy of a work that you do not possess. The downloader does not possess the work to create a copy. Only the uploader is even capable of creating the copy. The downloader cannot create a copy; he can only request.

If he does something else with that copy he receives, he becomes something other than merely a downloader. That “something else” could be unlawful, but that “something else” is not “downloading”.

It could be unlawful if the downloader gains unauthorized access to the computer system, but that would not be a copyright violation. It could be unlawful if the downloader conspires with the uploader, but the degree of collaboration would have to be much greater to support a conspiracy charge.

Downloading does not meet the statutory criteria for copyright infringement. Downloading alone is not infringement.

lobelia581 ,

UShttps://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/43b2f148-671f-406d-8708-8f466b340582.jpeg

UKhttps://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/cfc1d993-67bc-43e9-8dd4-b12da4d250c1.jpeg

EUhttps://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/bdb2ad32-44b2-4794-934e-9f78c93e3aa7.jpeg

Australia cuz why the hell nothttps://lemmy.dbzer0.com/pictrs/image/083d16a4-a68a-4b22-9944-92f66f5b13c4.jpeg

Angry_Maple ,
@Angry_Maple@sh.itjust.works avatar

The “You wouldn’t download a car” ad is coming to mind lol

TWeaK ,

Copyright applies to distribution, not consumption. You violate no law when I create an unauthorized copy of a work

This is completely untrue. Making any unauthorised copy is an infringement of copyright. Hell, the UK determined that merely loading a pirated game into RAM was unauthorised copying, making the act of playing a pirated game unlawful - thankfully this is ruling only the case in the UK, however the basic principles of copyright are the same all over the world.

When you buy something, you get a limited license to make copies for the purpose of viewing the material. That license does not extend to making backup copies. However, in a practical sense, it is very unlikely you will be prosecuted for most kinds of infringement like this - particularly when no money is involved. It’s still infringement, though.

Edit: I will say though: you violate no law when you view a copy I create. However I would still be infringing for making and showing you the copy.

In the case of making a book report, that is educational, and thus fair use. ChatGPT is not educational - you might use it for education, but ChatGPT’s use of copyrighted material is for commercial enterprise.

Rivalarrival ,

The uploader is the person creating the copy. Downloading is not creating a copy; downloading is receiving a copy.

I would love to see a citation on that UK precedent, but as you said: “thankfully this is only the case in the UK” and does not apply in the rest of the world.

Making any unauthorised copy is an infringement of copyright.

The exceptions to that are so numerous that the statement is closer to false than truth. “Fair Use” blows the absolute nature of that statement out of the water.

There has never been a successful prosecution for downloading only.

vrighter ,

Every single transfer of data is a copy. There is no such thing as moving data. Only copying it and then voluntarily deleting the original, to fake it having “moved”

Rivalarrival ,

Every single transmission of data is a copy. Receiving data is not. The person creating the copy is the sender, not the receiver.

maynarkh ,

I feel you guys are arguing very precise legal matters without defining the jurisdiction. I mean sure, go ahead, but it’s meaningless. One could say “I live in this random country and we don’t even have a concept of copyright, therefore it does not exist!”

Rivalarrival ,

Sarah Silverman is an American actress. OpenAI is an American country. Relevant jurisdiction was defined in the headline.

vrighter ,

eh it gets fuzzy. the sender transmits, but the receiver also writes a copy. it gets copied to the wire, and it gets copied from the wire. there is an ephemeral intermediate copy “on the wire”. I guess there’s no right answer; it’s like a fractal, the answer keeps changing when you look deeper

Rivalarrival ,

eh it gets fuzzy. the sender transmits, but the receiver also writes a copy

Got a Ring doorbell? A security camera? If I walk up to your camera and start playing a copyrighted work, have you infringed on copyright? Of course not. The recording you saved now contains a copy of the work, but you were privileged in recording at the time.

That doesn’t change when you ask me to come “send” that work to your camera. You are free to ask for something that I am not obligated to provide. If I choose to provide it, I am the infringing party, not you.

Downloading is no different. You ask me to use a specific protocol to send a specific work to a specific port at a specific address. I can choose to do that, or I can tell you to pound sand. If I choose to send it, I am the infringing party, not you.

The specific processes applied by the computer to save and replay the work would not qualify as “copying” under copyright law. If they did, viewing any copyrighted work would be an infringement, as the computer uses those same processes to view legitimate copies as illegitimate.

TWeaK ,

We’re not talking about fair use though - which also is incredibly limited. It only applies to education, news or criticism. Fair use would be an authorised copy, by definition.

and does not apply in the rest of the world.

The specific ruling does not apply to the rest of the world, so there is no established precedent elsewhere that playing a pirated video game is an offense. This just means someone wishing to prosecute this offense would have no case law to back up their claim. However the principle that led to the ruling is the same - you need a license to make a copy (except for fair use, which as I say would rarely apply) and computers copy files internally in order to display their content.

The uploader is the person creating the copy. Downloading is not creating a copy; downloading is receiving a copy.

One person is providing a copy to someone else - that person is infringing copyright - and the person receiving is writing a copy to their device, and furthermore needs to make copies to display the content - that person is also infringing copyright.

You can’t open a file like you would a book. You need to copy and process the file in order to display it.

There has never been a successful prosecution for downloading only.

There have been no prosecutions for downloading only because the level of damages is so low that it isn’t worth the cost of going to court. That doesn’t make it less illegal, it’s just more likely you’ll get away with it.

Rivalarrival ,

You can’t open a file like you would a book. You need to copy and process the file in order to display it.

That precedent has never been set in the US. The “process” you’re talking about for a human to open a digital book is not considered “copying” under US law.

There have been no prosecutions for downloading only because the level of damages is so low

That is a theory. Not a very compelling one, given the level of pettiness we regularly see in the courts. The precedent of a successful prosecution for downloading would be extremely valuable to rights holders: it would have a chilling effect on the entire community of pirates. The reverse is also true: a failed prosecution would lend a great deal of legitimacy to piracy for personal consumption.

The actual reason why rights holders aren’t pressing cases against downloaders is because they know they will fail. Copyright law is not written or interpreted in such a way as to enable prosecution of people for receiving a work, or even for requesting a work be sent to them. Copyright law envisions pirate distributors, not consumers.

givesomefucks ,

They get people torrenting movies by saying you seed while you leach…

So if they torrented them in mass, they broke it.

Rivalarrival ,

Exactly: seeding is uploading, and uploading can be infringement. So, if your torrent client seeded any part of the work to anyone, that could be considered infringement.

But, there is no evidence that ChatGPT received the works in question via torrent, and even if there was, there is no evidence that they actually seeded anything back to the swarm. Hell, there’s no evidence that ChatGPT even actually possesses the works in question.

lobelia581 ,

The US copyright office says this on their website

Uploading or downloading works protected by copyright without the authority of the copyright owner is an infringement of the copyright owner’s exclusive rights of reproduction and/or distribution.

If the company downloaded books without buying them to train their AI, that’s copyright infringement

Rivalarrival ,

The US copyright office says this on their website

Their website has zero legal precedence. It is an oversimplification that does not stand up to scrutiny.

The combined act of transmitting the work from uploader to downloader is infringing, but only the uploader’s actions conflict with copyright law. The downloader’s actions do not.

dartos ,

I’ve noticed that the lemmy crowd seems more accepting of AI stuff than the Reddit crowd was

aniki ,

I mean for tech stuff it’s fantastic. I could spend 30 minutes working out a regex to grep the logs in the format I need or I could have a back and forth with ChatGPT and get it sorted in 5.

I still don’t want it to write my TV or movies. Or code to a significant degree.

ColonelSanders ,

On the flip side, anytime I’ve tried to use it to write python scripts for me, it always seems to get them slightly wrong. Nothing that a little troubleshooting can’t handle, and certainly helps to get me in the ballpark of what I’m looking for, but I think it still has a little ways to go for specific coding use cases.

TheSaneWriter ,

I think the key there is that ChatGPT isn’t able to run its own code, so all it can do is generate code which “looks” right, which in practice is close to functional but not quite. In order for the code it writes to reliably work, I think it would need a builtin interpreter/compiler to actually run the code, and for it to iterate constantly making small modifications until the code runs, then return the final result to the user.

icosahedron ,

The new code interpreter is able to run its own code, but i haven’t personally tested it to see if its code is more often functional.

Okalaydokalay ,

That’s the same for me with Powershell and bash scripts.

Granted, I also never tell the AI certain details, like file names or folder locations. I always give it generic names that can’t be linked back to me so easily and then input the real information once I’ve copied it out.

I’ve had to do follow ups with the AI like when I get an error and continue using the original fake information.

It’s been really good at helping correct errors that come up as a result of what it gave me, most of the time. I can remember at least one time where we went around in circles and I ended up scrapping it and restarting in another direction.

Sheltac ,

It can even deal with basic algebra, it’s awesome. I can’t be fucked to work out this 16-var linear system, or even to write out the sympy to do it.

But guess who is?

TWeaK ,

I for one welcome our SkyNet overlords. They can’t be much worse than the current global leaders…

Karyoplasma ,

I always say “please” and “thank you” when using chatGPT. When the AI finally takes over and subsequently and inevitably concludes that the world would be a better place without humans, it may remember that myself specifically was always friendly. Maybe it’ll then have the courtesy to nuke my house directly instead of making me ultimatively succumb to nuclear winter.

gamer ,

That’s genius! I’ve been trying to figure out how to incorporate ChatGPT-like bots into my work, but haven’t found it to be that useful. I don’t write a lot of regex, but hate it every time I do, so I’ll definitely be trying this next time I need it.

mikelykzit ,

OMG. Using it for RegEx searches! How had that not even crossed my mind?

I’ve tried learning RegEx basics and using some websites to point me in the right direction when a specific use comes up, but tuning the search string correctly usually takes longer than it’s been worth. Off to ChatGPT it is!

pressanykeynow ,

I’d use it with caution as there are no small mistakes in regex - any can lead to big problems, and ChatGPT does often give wrong or not entirely correct answers.

aniki ,

You need to know regex to use it with chatgpt as it’s generally wrong on the first go. I use regex 101 to verify before I run it on anything.

Take the udemy course on regex if you’re having trouble getting it. It’s fantastic and you’ll go from 20 to a 100 real fast.

Karyoplasma ,

I use ChatGPT to romanize Farsi script from song texts and such. There is no other tool that works even remotely well and the AI somehow knows how to properly transliterate.

throwsbooks ,
@throwsbooks@lemmy.world avatar

It’s probably related to the fact that it seems a lot of Lemmy users are in tech, rather than art.

I think generative AI is a great tool, but a lot of people who don’t understand how it works either overestimate (it can do everything and it’s so smart!!) or underestimate it (all it does is steal my work!!)

comic_zalgo_sans , (edited )

deleted_by_author

    •
    throwsbooks ,
    @throwsbooks@lemmy.world avatar

    Personally, I’m a comp sci graduate who did several courses exploring AI, but I actually started out in fine arts and continue to paint, write, and play music to this day. I’m sure I’ll be blending these studies in some way when I move on to my master’s.

    I agree that automation is scary. It’s unregulated. But it’s not the tech so much that’s evil, but rather the employers who see it as a reason to get rid of employees. And before, it’d be manual labour that we replaced with machines. People doing mental labour thought they were immune, until now they’re not. Our economic system’s going to need to change in some way.

    But generative AI can be very good even for artists. For example, sometimes I suffer from writer’s block (who doesn’t?). Now, I can feed what I’m working on into chatGPT and have it spit out an example of the next paragraph. Sometimes that’s enough to spur me on so I can write the next page.

    Artist movements in general are pretty conservative. When digital painting first became a thing, allowing people use layers and filters so easily, the kneejerk reaction by artists was to consider it cheating.

    My hope is that in an ideal world, human-made art becomes valuable in the future precisely because it has the human touch. Live music played on real instruments, paintings on canvas, the sorts of things with quirks and imperfections and a human element that can’t be mass produced. Let the corporations have their algorithmic, soulless advertisements, and let the people focus on true self expression.

    But then for people without artistic talent, say those who want to make indie games but can’t hire an artist or a musician because they’re just some kid with a dream and little experience? Hell, why not let them generate some assets with AI?

    But we need to make sure that people aren’t afraid of becoming homeless, starving on the streets. I think, we’re not getting rid of AI at this point, it’s too powerful, and I don’t have an answer to our societal problems. For better or worse, we’ll adapt.

    surrendertogravity ,
    @surrendertogravity@wayfarershaven.eu avatar

    I appreciate this point of view! My BA is in visual arts, but I’ve also leaned heavily into tech, programming as a hobby, etc.

    I think there’s a lot of different topical threads at play when it comes to AI art (classism and fine art, what average viewers vs trained viewers find appealing in a visual medium, etc) – but the economic issue that you point out are really key. Many artists rely on their craft for their literal bodily survival, so AI art is very much a real threat to them.

    But, when I first interacted with Midjourney, and seeing my mom (just an average lady) being excited about AI generated art, I can’t help but see it like photography – all of a sudden the average person gets access to a way of visually capturing things that make them happy, that they think look cool, something they saw in a dream but didn’t have the skill to create visually… and that doesn’t sound like an inherently bad thing to me.

    Holodeck_Moriarty ,

    I just think it’s awesome technology and that we shouldn’t be holding it back. AI is pandora’s box, and that box can’t be closed now that it’s open.

    All these attempts to restrict it remind me of the old efforts to stop people from taping TV shows with their VCRs.

    AlexWIWA ,

    Accepting of AI as a concept yes. But we’re not too accepting of the current generation of theft-markov-generators that companies want to try and replace us with.

    dartos ,

    They’re a lot more than markov generators, but yeah. I don’t really think, in the long run, we’re going to see too many jobs displaced by AI.

    Im not convinced that our statistics based training methods will lead to true iRobot style AGI.

    And any company (except maybe visual novel shops) that fires people in favor of AI is going to regret it within 2 years.

    AlexWIWA ,

    Yeah I’m being facetious when I call them markovs. I’m mainly just saying that they are basically regurgitating copyrighted material based on statistics, so I believe they are just automated copyright violations.

    Completely agree with your comment.

    Asafum ,

    I feel like when confronted about a “stolen comedy bit” a lot of these people complaining would also argue that “no work is entirely unique, everyone borrows from what already existed before.” But now they’re all coming out of the woodwork for a payday or something… It’s kinda frustrating especially if they kill any private use too…

    TheyHaveNoName ,

    I’m a teacher and the last half of this school year was a comedy of my colleagues trying to “ban” chat GPT. I’m not so much worried about students using chat GPT to do work. A simple two minute conversation with a student who creates an excellent (but suspected) piece of writing will tell you whether they wrote it themselves or not. What worries me is exactly those moments where you’re asking for a summary or a synopsis of something. You really have no idea what data is being used to create that summary.

    BedbugCutlefish ,
    @BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.world avatar

    The issue isn’t that people are using others works for ‘derivative’ content.

    The issue is that, for a person to ‘derive’ comedy from Sarah Silverman the ‘analogue’ way, you have to get her works legally, be that streaming her comedy specials, or watching movies/shows she’s written for.

    With chat GPT and other AI, its been ‘trained’ on her work (and, presumably as many other’s works as possible) once, and now there’s no ‘views’, or even sources given, to those properties.

    And like a lot of digital work, its reach and speed is unprecedented. Like, previously, yeah, of course you could still ‘derive’ from people’s works indirectly, like from a friend that watched it and recounted the ‘good bits’, or through general ‘cultural osmosis’. But that was still limited by the speed of humans, and of culture. With AI, it can happen a functionally infinite number of times, nearly instantly.

    Is all that to say Silverman is 100% right here? Probably not. But I do think that, the legality of ChatGPT, and other AI that can ‘copy’ artist’s work, is worth questioning. But its a sticky enough issue that I’m genuinely not sure what the best route is. Certainly, I think current AI writing and image generation ought to be ineligible for commercial use until the issue has at least been addressed.

    Rivalarrival ,

    The issue is that, for a person to ‘derive’ comedy from Sarah Silverman the ‘analogue’ way, you have to get her works legally,

    That is not actually true.

    I would violate copyright by making an unauthorized copy and providing it to you, but you do not violate copyright for simply viewing that unauthorized copy. Sarah can come after me for creating the cop[y|ies], but she can’t come after the people to whom I send them, even if they admit to having willingly viewed a copy they knew to be unauthorized.

    Copyright applies to distribution, not consumption.

    azuth ,

    The issue is that, for a person to ‘derive’ comedy from Sarah Silverman the ‘analogue’ way, you have to get her works legally, be that streaming her comedy specials, or watching movies/shows she’s written for.

    Damn did they already start implanting DRM bio-chips in people?

    And like a lot of digital work, its reach and speed is unprecedented. Like, previously, yeah, of course you could still ‘derive’ from people’s works indirectly, like from a friend that watched it and recounted the ‘good bits’, or through general ‘cultural osmosis’.

    Please explain why you cannot download a movie/episode/ebook illegally and then directly derive from it.

    BedbugCutlefish ,
    @BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean, you can do that, but that’s a crime.

    Which is exactly what Sarah Silverman is claiming ChatGPT is doing.

    And, beyond a individual crime of a person reading a pirated book, again, we’re talking about ChatGPT and other AI magnifying reach and speed, beyond what an individual person ever could do even if they did nothing but read pirated material all day, not unlike websites like The Pirate Bay. Y’know, how those website constantly get taken down and have to move around the globe to areas where they’re beyond the reach of the law, due to the crimes they’re doing.

    I’m not like, anti-piracy or anything. But also, I don’t think companies should be using pirated software, and my big concern about LLMs aren’t really for private use, but for corporate use.

    azuth ,

    I mean, you can do that, but that’s a crime.

    Consuming content illegally is by definition a crime, yes. It also has no effect on your output. A summary or review of that content will not be infringing, it will still be fair use.

    A more substantial work inspired by that content could be infringing or not depending on how close it is to the original content but not on the legality of your viewing of that content.

    Nor is it relevant. If you have any success with your copy you are going to cause way more damage to the original creator than pirating one copy.

    And, beyond a individual crime of a person reading a pirated book, again, we’re talking about ChatGPT and other AI magnifying reach and speed, beyond what an individual person ever could do even if they did nothing but read pirated material all day, not unlike websites like The Pirate Bay. Y’know, how those website constantly get taken down and have to move around the globe to areas where they’re beyond the reach of the law, due to the crimes they’re doing.

    I can assure you that The Pirate Bay is quite stable. I would like to point out that none of AI vendors has been actually convicted of copyright infringement yet. That their use is infringing and a crime is your opinion.

    It also going to be irrelevant because there are companies that do own massive amounts of copyrighted materials and will be able to train their own AIs, both to sell as a service and to cut down on labor costs of creating new materials. There are also companies that got people to agree to licensing their content for AI training such as Adobe.

    So copyright law will not be able to help creators. So there will be a push for more laws and regulators. Depending on what they manage to push through you can forget non major corp backed AI, reduced fair use rights (as in unapproved reviews being de-facto illegal) and perhaps a new push against software that could be used for piracy such as non-regulated video or music players, nevermind encoders etc.

    BedbugCutlefish ,
    @BedbugCutlefish@lemmy.world avatar

    Consuming content illegally is by definition a crime, yes. It also has no effect on your output. A summary or review of that content will not be infringing, it will still be fair use.

    That their use is infringing and a crime is your opinion.

    “My opinion”? have you read the headline? Its not my opinion that matters, its that of the prosecution in this lawsuit. And this lawsuit indeed alleges that copyright infringement has occurred; it’ll be up to the courts to see if the claim holds water.

    I’m definitely not sure that GPT4 or other AI models are copyright infringing or otherwise illegal. But, I think that there’s enough that seems questionable that a lawsuit is valid to do some fact-finding, and honestly, I feel like the law is a few years behind on AI anyway.

    But it seem plausible that the AI could be found to be ‘illegally distributing works’, or otherwise have broken IP laws at some point during their training or operation. A lot depends on what kind of agreements were signed over the contents of the training packages, something I frankly know nothing about, and would like to see come to light.

    azuth ,

    “My opinion”? have you read the headline? Its not my opinion that matters, its that of the prosecution in this lawsuit. And this lawsuit indeed alleges that copyright infringement has occurred; it’ll be up to the courts to see if the claim holds water.

    No, the opinion that matters is the opinion of the judge. Before we have a decision, there is no copyright infringement.

    I’m definitely not sure that GPT4 or other AI models are copyright infringing or otherwise illegal. But, I think that there’s enough that seems questionable that a lawsuit is valid to do some fact-finding You sure speak as if you do.

    and honestly, I feel like the law is a few years behind on AI anyway.

    But it seem plausible that the AI could be found to be ‘illegally distributing works’, or otherwise have broken IP laws at some point during their training or operation. A lot depends on what kind of agreements were signed over the contents of the training packages, something I frankly know nothing about, and would like to see come to light.

    I 've said in my previous post that copyright will not solve the problems, what you describe as it being behind AI. Considering how the laws regarding copyright ‘caught up with the times’ in the beginning of the internet… I am not optimistic the changes will be beneficial to society.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Consuming content illegally is by definition a crime, yes.

    What law makes it illegal to consume an unauthorized copy of a work?

    That’s not a flippant question. I am being absolutely serious. Copyright law prohibits the creation and distribution of unauthorized copies; it does not prohibit the reception, possession, or consumption of those copies. You can only declare content consumption to be “illegal” if there is actually a law against it.

    azuth ,

    What law makes it illegal to consume an unauthorized copy of a work?

    That’s not a flippant question. I am being absolutely serious. Copyright law prohibits the creation and distribution of unauthorized copies; it does not prohibit the reception, possession, or consumption of those copies. You can only declare content consumption to be “illegal” if there is actually a law against it.

    Which legal system?

    Rivalarrival ,

    She’s an American actor, suing an American company, so I think we should discuss the laws of Botswana, Mozambique, and Narnia. /s

    azuth ,

    The copying part. Yes, you can conceive a theoritical example where you can consume the content without reproducing it but it’s not what happened in this case.

    Or any AI case. There are AI trained outside of the US but they all download the data to train on. They delete it after. What makes it not infringing in AI training is fair use exception for research.

    Rivalarrival ,

    The copying part.

    The uploader is the only person/entity that qualifies as infringing under copyright law. The downloader does not. The downloader is merely receiving the copy; the uploader is the one who producing the copy.

    Fair use exemptions are only necessary for producing a copy without permission. No fair use exemption is necessary for either receiving a copy, or for consuming or otherwise using that copy.

    azuth ,

    The uploader is the only person/entity that qualifies as infringing under copyright law. The downloader does not. The downloader is merely receiving the copy; the uploader is the one who producing the copy.

    Where does it say that in US copyright law? Downloading is making a copy.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Title 17 of US Code

    I agree that after a download is complete, a copy has come into existence, and it is located on the downloader’s computer. But, the downloader did not have the work prior to downloading. How can he make a copy of something he does not yet possess? What is the “original” from which this copy came to exist? Who had any obligations under copyright law regarding that original?

    The answer, of course, is that the “original” was located on the uploader’s computer. He is responsible for the actions of that machine. He controls it. He decides to whom to send it. He decides how many people it will be sent to. He is fully and solely responsible for distributing the work in his possession.

    Every prohibited act is performed by the uploader, not the downloader.

    No, Silverman’s argument is not that the mere possession of the work by ChatGPT violates copyright, because yhat question has long since been answered: the artist controls the work, not the audience. The artist cannot decide who is and is not allowed to consume the work. Regardless of how someone came to consume the work, they are fully entitled to speak about it.

    Instead, her argument is that the summaries produced by ChatGPT violate the copyright of her work. She is trying to argue that these summaries are merely derivative works, rather than “transformative derivations”. She’s trying to argue that you can’t summarize her work; that your summary of her work violates her copyright.

    She is wrong.

    azuth ,

    I agree that after a download is complete, a copy has come into existence, and it is located on the downloader’s computer. But, the downloader did not have the work prior to downloading. How can he make a copy of something he does not yet possess? What is the “original” from which this copy came to exist? Who had any obligations under copyright law regarding that original?

    Unless you can point where the law says you have to make the copy from a copy you posses it is irrelevant.

    But we do actually have precedent where there was creation of copies out of thin air. VHS recordings of broadcast, Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios. It was actually settled on time-shifted of free-aired material being fair use. Nobody argued that the VCR owners having no copy before recording did not make a copy.

    No, Silverman’s argument is not that the mere possession of the work by ChatGPT violates copyright, because what question has long since been answered: the artist controls the work, not the audience. The artist cannot decide who is and is not allowed to consume the work. Regardless of how someone came to consume the work, they are fully entitled to speak about it.

    I will concede that there are situations where you can just consume copyrighted material without copying them (which downloading is). That would be if you I downloaded a movie and invited you to watch it, or a sports bar showing illegal streams.

    My whole point is that it does not matter if you have committed copyright infringement, you can always make fair use derivative works such as reviews. I could get DVDs from a friend in the 00s and copy them to a my own disc before watching the copy. That would mean I infringed even in your wrong understanding of copyright. If it was worth it and there was evidence of it the copyright owner would be able to successfully sue me for copying them.

    He could correctly argue that me copying the disc, infringing on his copyright, was necessary for me to write a review of his movie, a derivative work. It would not matter.

    I could later make another film that is inspired by the movie whose copyright I infringed upon. If the movie is not too similar it would not be itself infringing. If it too similar it could be infringing but so would a movie made by someone who committed no copyright infringement to be able to watch the original.

    This is what the discussions was about. AI opponents push the idea that if there was copyright infringement on the training process, any output of AI must be infringing or derivative of the original work. Which is bullshit.

    I suppose you are not pro-copyright, same as me, but you are not helping any argument by making claims that are besides the point and wrong.

    Rivalarrival ,

    But we do actually have precedent where there was creation of copies out of thin air. VHS recordings of broadcast, Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios. It was actually settled on time-shifted of free-aired material being fair use. Nobody argued that the VCR owners having no copy before recording did not make a copy.

    You’re conflating the concept of “recording” with the concept of “copying”. They weren’t making a copy. They were making a recording. As your citation demonstrates, these two concepts are not the same thing.

    Importantly, there is no difference in the legality of recording when we switch from an authorized broadcaster to a pirate transmitter. It is still perfectly lawful to create a recording of what was sent to you.

    Even if you call up the pirate station and ask them to transmit the specific work that you want to receive, the transmitter is still exclusively responsible. Even if you call them up and ask them to retransmit those parts you didn’t receive clearly, the infringement is theirs, not yours. You are free to receive and record whatever someone wants to send you.

    Downloading is recording, not copying. You are receiving and saving the work that is being transmitted to you.

    azuth ,

    You’re conflating the concept of “recording” with the concept of “copying”. They weren’t making a copy. They were making a recording. As your citation demonstrates, these two concepts are not the same thing.

    Fuck off mate, you are full of shit. The concept of recording is so different to copying according to my citation that the recording are made via ‘copying devices’. It’s also immaterial. RECORDINGS could infringe and thus the court therefore examines if the fair use exception applies.

    I will no more argue with you, since you are dishonest.

    Rivalarrival ,

    They are technologically similar concepts, but there are distinct legal differences. When the act is performed by a single legal entity, it is “copying”. Where the act is performed by two separate legal entities, the receiving entity is “recording”. The transmitting entity is “distributing”.

    RECORDINGS could infringe

    There can certainly be infringement involved in the complete act, but it is committed by the entity distributing the work without permission, not the entity receiving the work.

    Recording could be infringing in certain special circumstances, where the rightsholder controls both the transmission of the work as well as the presence of the receiver. It could be infringement to record inside a theater, for example.

    But they cannot prohibit me from putting up an antenna and recording what I hear; they cannot prohibit me from attaching a computer to a network and recording what is sent to me over that network.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Please explain why you cannot download a movie/episode/ebook illegally and then directly derive from it.

    The law does not prohibit the receiving of an unauthorized copy. The law prohibits the distribution of the unauthorized copy. It is possible to send/transmit/upload a movie/episode/ebook illegally, but the act of receiving/downloading that unauthorized copy is not prohibited and not illegal.

    You can’t illegally download a movie/episode/ebook for the same reason that you can’t illegally park your car in your own garage: there is no law making it illegal.

    Even if ChatGPT possesses an unauthorized copy of the work, it would only violate copyright law if it created and distributed a new copy of that work. A summary of the work would be considered a “transformative derivation”, and would fall well within the boundaries of fair-use.

    barsoap ,

    The issue is that, for a person to ‘derive’ comedy from Sarah Silverman the ‘analogue’ way, you have to get her works legally, be that streaming her comedy specials, or watching movies/shows she’s written for.

    I can also talk to a guy in a bar rambling about her work. That guy’s name? ChatGPT.

    MaxPower ,
    @MaxPower@feddit.de avatar

    I like her and I get why creatives are panicking because of all the AI hype.

    However:

    In evidence for the suit against OpenAI, the plaintiffs claim ChatGPT violates copyright law by producing a “derivative” version of copyrighted work when prompted to summarize the source.

    A summary is not a copyright infringement. If there is a case for fair-use it’s a summary.

    The comic’s suit questions if AI models can function without training themselves on protected works.

    A language model does not need to be trained on the text it is supposed to summarize. She clearly does not know what she is talking about.

    IANAL though.

    jmcs ,

    I guess they will get to analyze OpenAI’s dataset during discovery. I bet OpenAI didn’t have authorization to use even 1% of the content they used.

    maynarkh ,

    That’s why they don’t feel they can operate in the EU, as the EU will mandate AI companies to publish what datasets they trained their solutions on.

    Jaded ,

    Things might change but right now, you simply don’t need anyones authorization.

    Hopefully it doesn’t change because only a handful of companies have the data or the funds to buy the data, it would kill any kind of open source or low priced endeavour.

    Flaky ,
    @Flaky@iusearchlinux.fyi avatar

    FWIW, Common Crawl - a free/open-source dataset of crawled internet pages - was used by OpenAI for GPT-2 and GPT-3 as well as EleutherAI’s GPT-NeoX. Maybe on GPT3.5/ChatGPT as well but they’ve been hush about that.

    erogenouswarzone ,
    @erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml avatar

    SS is such a tool. Does anybody remember the big anti-gay speech that launched her career in The Way of the Gun? She’ll do anything to get ahead.

    Here’s the speech: www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAl5xGi7urQ

    wick ,

    You hate her because of a part in a shitty movie?

    erogenouswarzone ,
    @erogenouswarzone@lemmy.ml avatar

    Did I say hate? I said she’s a tool.

    MargotRobbie ,
    @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

    She’s going to lose the lawsuit. It’s an open and shut case.

    “Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc.” is the precedent case, in which the US Supreme Court established that transformative digitalization of copyrighted material inside a search engine constitutes as fair use, and text used for training LLMs are even more transformative than book digitalization since it is near impossible to reconstitute the original work barring extreme overtraining.

    You will have to understand why styles can’t and should not be able to be copyrighted, because that would honestly be a horrifying prospect for art.

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    “Transformative” in this context does not mean simply not identical to the source material. It has to serve a different purpose and to provide additional value that cannot be derived from the original.

    The summary that they talk about in the article is a bad example for a lawsuit because it is indeed transformative. A summary provides a different sort of value than the original work. However if the same LLM writes a book based on the books used as training data, then it is definitely not an open and shut case whether this is transformative.

    MargotRobbie ,
    @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

    But what an LLM does meets your listed definition of transformative as well, it indeed provides additional value that can’t be derive from the original, because everything it outputs is completely original but similar in style to the original that you can’t use to reconstitute the original work, in other words, similar to fan work, which is also why the current ML models, text2text or text2image, are called “transformers”. Again, works similar in style to the original cannot and should not be considered copyright infringement, because that’s a can of worm nobody actually wants to open, and the courts has been very consistent on that.

    So, I would find it hard to believe that if there is a Supreme Court ruling which finds digitalizing copyrighted material in a database is fair use and not derivative work, that they wouldn’t consider digitalizing copyrighted material in a database with very lossy compression (that’s a more accurate description of what LLMs are, please give this a read if you have time) fair use as well. Of course, with the current Roberts court, there is always the chance that weird things can happen, but I would be VERY surprised.

    There is also the previous ruling that raw transformer output cannot be copyrighted, but that’s beyond the scope of this post for now.

    My problem with LLM outputs is mostly that they are just bad writing, and I’ve been pretty critical against “”“Open”""AI elsewhere on Lemmy, but I don’t see Siverman’s case going anywhere.

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    But what an LLM does meets your listed definition of transformative as well

    No it doesn’t. Sometimes the output is used in completely different ways but sometimes it is a direct substitute. The most obvious example is when it is writing code that the user intends to incorporate into their work. The output is not transformative by this definition as it serves the same purpose as the original works and adds no new value, except stripping away the copyright of course.

    everything it outputs is completely original

    [citation needed]

    that you can’t use to reconstitute the original work

    Who cares? That has never been the basis for copyright infringement. For example, as far as I know I can’t make and sell a doll that looks like Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie. It should be considered transformative work. A doll has nothing to do with the cartoon. It provides a completely different sort of value. It is not even close to being a direct copy or able to reconstitute the original. And yet, as far as I know I am not allowed to do it, and even if I am, I won’t risk going to court against Disney to find out. The fear alone has made sure that we mere mortals cannot copy and transform even the smallest parts of copyrighted works owned by big companies.

    I would find it hard to believe that if there is a Supreme Court ruling which finds digitalizing copyrighted material in a database is fair use and not derivative work

    Which case are you citing? Context matters. LLMs aren’t just a database. They are also a frontend to extract the data from these databases, that is being heavily marketed and sold to people who might otherwise have bought the original works instead.

    The lossy compression is also irrelevant, otherwise literally every pirated movie/series release would be legal. How lossy is it even? How would you measure it? I’ve seen github copilot spit out verbatim copies of code. I’m pretty sure that if I ask ChatGPT to recite me a very well known poem it will also be a verbatim copy. So there are at least some works that are included completely losslessly. Which ones? No one knows and that’s a big problem.

    MargotRobbie ,
    @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

    I’m tired of internet arguments. If you are not going to make a good faith attempt to understand anything I said, then I see no point in continuing this discussion further. Good day.

    ZIRO , (edited )
    @ZIRO@lemmy.world avatar

    Let’s remove the context of AI altogether.

    Say, for instance, you were to check out and read a book from a free public library. You then go on to use some of the book’s content as the basis of your opinions. More, you also absorb some of the common language structures used in that book and unwittingly use them on your own when you speak or write.

    Are you infringing on copyright by adopting the book’s views and using some of the sentence structures its author employed? At what point can we say that an author owns the language in their work? Who owns language, in general?

    Assuming that a GPT model cannot regurgitate verbatim the contents of its training dataset, how is copyright applicable to it?

    Edit: I also would imagine that if we were discussing an open source LLM instead of GPT-4 or GPT-3.5, sentiment here would be different. And more, I imagine that some of the ire here stems from a misunderstanding of how transformer models are trained and how they function.

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    Let’s remove the context of AI altogether.

    Yeah sure if you do that then you can say anything. But the context is crucial. Imagine that you could prove in court that I went down to the public library with a list that read “Books I want to read for the express purpose of mimicking, and that I get nothing else out of”, and on that list was your book. Imagine you had me on tape saying that for me writing is not a creative expression of myself, but rather I am always trying to find the word that the authors I have studied would use. Now that’s getting closer to the context of AI. I don’t know why you think you would need me to sell verbatim copies of your book to have a good case against me. Just a few passages should suffice given my shady and well-documented intentions.

    Well that’s basically what LLMs look like to me.

    Riptide502 ,

    AI is a duel sided blade. On one hand, you have an incredible piece of technology that can greatly improve the world. On the other, you have technology that can be easily misused to a disastrous degree.

    I think most people can agree that an ideal world with AI is one where it is a tool to supplement innovation/research/creative output. Unfortunately, that is not the mindset of venture capitalists and technology enthusiasts. The tools are already extremely powerful, so these parties see them as replacements to actual humans/workers.

    The saddest example has to be graphic designers/digital artists. It’s not some job that “anyone can do.” It’s an entire profession that takes years to master and perfect. AI replacement doesn’t just mean taking away their job, it’s rendering years of experience worthless. The frustrating thing is it’s doing all of this with their works, their art. Even with more regulations on the table, companies like adobe and deviant art are still using shady practices to unknowingly con users into building their AI algorithms (quietly instating automatic OPT-IN and making OPT-OUT options difficult). It’s sort of like forcing a man to dig their own grave.

    You can’t blame artists for being mad about the whole situation. If you were in their same position, you would be just as angry and upset. The hard truth is that a large portion of the job market could likely be replaced by AI at some point, so it could happen to you.

    These tools need to be TOOLS, not replacements. AI has it’s downfalls and expert knowledge should be used as a supplement to both improve these tools and the final product. There was a great video that covered some of those fundamental issues (such as not actually “knowing” or understanding what a certain object/concept is), but I can’t find it right now. I think the best comes when everyone is cooperating.

    Steeve ,

    Even as tools, every time we increase worker productivity without a similar adjustment to wages we transfer more wealth to the top. It’s definitely time to seriously discuss a universal basic income.

    Tosti , (edited )
    @Tosti@feddit.nl avatar

    deleted_by_author

    •
    sparky678348 ,

    I know this is kind of a silly argument but storing protected work in our own human memories to recall later is certainly not reproduction.

    I don’t think it’s reproduction for chat GPT to file away that information to call on it later. It’s just better at it than we are.

    TheSaneWriter ,

    If the models were trained on pirated material, the companies here have stupidly opened themselves to legal liability and will likely lose money over this, though I think they’re more likely to settle out of court than lose. In terms of AI plagiarism in general, I think that could be alleviated if an AI had a way to cite its sources, i.e. point back to where in its training data it obtained information. If AI cited its sources and did not word for word copy them, then I think it would fall under fair use. If someone then stripped the sources out and paraded the work as their own, then I think that would be plagiarism again, where that user is plagiarizing both the AI and the AI’s sources.

    ayaya , (edited )

    It is impossible for an AI to cite its sources, at least in the current way of doing things. The AI itself doesn’t even know where any particular text comes from. Large language models are essentially really complex word predictors, they look at the previous words and then predict the word that comes next.

    When it’s training it’s putting weights on different words and phrases in relation to each other. If one source makes a certain weight go up by 0.0001% and then another does the same, and then a third makes it go down a bit, and so on-- how do you determine which ones affected the outcome? Multiply this over billions if not trillions of words and there’s no realistic way to track where any particular text is coming from unless it happens to quote something exactly.

    And if it did happen to quote something exactly, which is basically just random chance, the AI wouldn’t even be aware it was quoting anything. When it’s running it doesn’t have access to the data it was trained on, it only has the weights on its “neurons.” All it knows are that certain words and phrases either do or don’t show up together often.

    dep ,
    @dep@lemmy.world avatar

    Feels like a publicity play

    Zetaphor ,
    @Zetaphor@zemmy.cc avatar

    Quoting this comment from the HN thread:

    On information and belief, the reason ChatGPT can accurately summarize a certain copyrighted book is because that book was copied by OpenAI and ingested by the underlying OpenAI Language Model (either GPT-3.5 or GPT-4) as part of its training data.

    While it strikes me as perfectly plausible that the Books2 dataset contains Silverman’s book, this quote from the complaint seems obviously false.

    First, even if the model never saw a single word of the book’s text during training, it could still learn to summarize it from reading other summaries which are publicly available. Such as the book’s Wikipedia page.

    Second, it’s not even clear to me that a model which only saw the text of a book, but not any descriptions or summaries of it, during training would even be particular good at producing a summary.

    We can test this by asking for a summary of a book which is available through Project Gutenberg (which the complaint asserts is Books1 and therefore part of ChatGPT’s training data) but for which there is little discussion online. If the source of the ability to summarize is having the book itself during training, the model should be equally able to summarize the rare book as it is Silverman’s book.

    I chose “The Ruby of Kishmoor” at random. It was added to PG in 2003. ChatGPT with GPT-3.5 hallucinates a summary that doesn’t even identify the correct main characters. The GPT-4 model refuses to even try, saying it doesn’t know anything about the story and it isn’t part of its training data.

    If ChatGPT’s ability to summarize Silverman’s book comes from the book itself being part of the training data, why can it not do the same for other books?

    As the commentor points out, I could recreate this result using a smaller offline model and an excerpt from the Wikipedia page for the book.

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    You are treating publicly available information as free from copyright, which is not the case. Wikipedia content is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0. Images might be covered by different licenses. Online articles about the book are also covered by copyright unless explicitly stated otherwise.

    Zetaphor ,
    @Zetaphor@zemmy.cc avatar

    My understanding is that the copyright applies to reproductions of the work, which this is potentially not. If I provide a summary of a copyrighted summary of a copyrighted work, am I in violation of either copyright because I created a new derivative summary?

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    Not a lawyer so I can’t be sure. To my understanding a summary of a work is not a violation of copyright because the summary is transformative (serves a completely different purpose to the original work). But you probably can’t copy someone else’s summary, because now you are making a derivative that serves the same purpose as the original.

    So here are the issues with LLMs in this regard:

    • LLMs have been shown to produce verbatim or almost-verbatim copies of their training data
    • LLMs can’t figure out where their output came from so they can’t tell their user whether the output closely matches any existing work, and if it does what license it is distributed under
    • You can argue that by its nature, an LLM is only ever producing derivative works of its training data, even if they are not the verbatim or almost-verbatim copies I already mentioned
    barsoap ,

    LLMs have been shown to produce verbatim or almost-verbatim copies of their training data

    That’s either overfitting and means the training went wrong, or plain chance. Gazillions of bonkers court cases over “did the artist at some point in their life hear a particular melody” come to mind. Great. Now that’s flanked with allegations of eidetic memory we have reached peak capitalism.

    crackgammon ,

    Don’t all three of those points apply to humans?

    Banzai51 ,
    @Banzai51@midwest.social avatar

    Aren’t summaries and reviews covered under fair use? Otherwise Newspapers have been violating copyrights for hundreds of years.

    barsoap ,

    Second, it’s not even clear to me that a model which only saw the text of a book, but not any descriptions or summaries of it, during training would even be particular good at producing a summary.

    Summarising stuff is literally all ML models do. It’s their bread and butter: See what’s out there and categorise into a (ridiculously) high-dimensional semantic space. Put a bit flippantly: You shouldn’t be surprised if it’s giving you the same synopsis for both Dances with Wolves and Avatar because they are indeed very similar stories, occupying the same approximate position in that space. If you don’t ask for a summary but a full screenplay it’s going to come up with random details to fill in the details it ignored while categorising, again the results will look similar if you squint right because, again, they’re at the core the same story.

    It’s not even really necessary for those models to learn the concept of “summary” – only that, in a prompt, it means “write a 200 word output instead of a 20000 word one”. It will produce a longer or shorter description of that position in space, hallucinating more or less details. It’s really no different than police interviewing you as a witness to a car accident and having to pay attention to not prompt you wrong, including assuming that you saw certain things or you, too, will come up with random bullshit (and believe it): It’s all a reconstructive process, generating a concrete thing from an abstract representation. There’s really no art to summary it’s inherent in how semantic abstraction works.

    sagrotan ,
    @sagrotan@lemmy.world avatar

    Like the record labels sued every music sharing platform in the early days. Adapt. They’re all afraid of new things but in the end nobody can stop it. Think, learn, work with it, not against it.

    diskmaster23 ,

    I think it’s valid. This isn’t about the tech, but the sources of your work.

    sagrotan ,
    @sagrotan@lemmy.world avatar

    Of course it’s valid. And the misuse of AI has to be fight. Nevertheless we have to think differently in the face of something we cannot stop in the long run. You cannot create a powerful tool and only misuse it. I miscommunicated here, should’ve explained myself, I got no excuses, maybe one: I sat on the shitter and wanted to make things short.

    RoundSparrow ,

    The comic’s suit questions if AI models can function without training themselves on protected works.

    I doubt a human can compose chat responses without having trained at school on previous language. Copyright favors the rich and powerful, established like Silverman.

    trachemys ,

    We are overdue for strengthening fair use.

    Rivalarrival ,

    Indeed.

    Possession of a copyrighted work should never be considered infringement. The fact that a book is floating around in a mind must not be considered infringement no matter how it got into that mind, nor whether that mind is biological or artificially constructed.

    Until that work comes back out of that mind in substantially identical form as to how it went in, it cannot be considered copyright infringement.

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    Selectively breaking copyright laws specifically to allow AI models also favors the rich, unfortunately. These models will make a very small group of rich people even richer while putting out of work the millions of creators whose works wore stolen to train the models.

    TheSaneWriter ,

    To be fair, in most Capitalist nations, literally any decision made will favor the rich because the system is automatically geared that way. I don’t think the solution is trying to come up with more jobs or prevent new technology from emerging in order to preserve existing jobs, but rather to retool our social structure so that people are able to survive while working less.

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    Oh no, rich assholes who continuously lobby for strict copyright and patent laws in order to suffocate competition might find themselves restricted by it for once. Quick, find me the world’s smallest violin!

    No, if you want AI to emerge, argue in favor of relaxing copyright law in all cases, not specifically to allow AI to copyright launder other peoples’ works.

    RedCanasta ,

    Copyright laws are a recent phenomenon and should have never been a thing imo. The only reason it’s there is not to “protect creators,” but to make sure upper classes extract as much wealth over the maximum amount of time possible.

    Music piracy has showed that it’s got too many holes in it to be effective, and now AI is showing us its redundancy as it uses data to give better results.

    it stifles creativity to the point it makes us inhuman. Hell, Chinese writers used to praise others if they used a line or two from other writers.

    TheSaneWriter ,

    I think that copyright laws are fine in a vacuum, but that if nothing else we should review the amount of time before a copyright enters the public domain. Disney lobbied to have it set to something awful like 100 years, and I think it should almost certainly be shorter than that.

    Marxine ,
    @Marxine@lemmy.ml avatar

    VC backed AI makers and billionaire-ran corporations should definitely pay for the data they use to train their models. The common user should definitely check the licences of the data they use as well.

    SixTrickyBiscuits ,

    That is essentially impossible. How are they going to pay each reddit user whose comment the AI analyzed? Or each website it analyzed? We’re talking about terabytes of text data taken from a huge variety of sources.

    CannaVet ,

    Then it should be treated as what it is, an illegal venture based off of theft. I don’t get a legal pass to steal just because the groceries I stole got cooked into a meal and are therefore no longer the groceries I stole.

    azuth ,

    Firstly copyright infringement is not theft. It’s not theft because the grocer still has the groceries. It is a lesser crime which obviously hurts the victim less if at all in some cases.

    A summary is also not copyright infringement, it’s fair use. Of course copyright holders would love to copyright strike bad reviews (they already do even though it’s not illegal).

    Marxine ,
    @Marxine@lemmy.ml avatar

    Billionaires can spend and burn their whole net worth for all I care. Datasets should be either:

    • Paid for to the provider platform, and each original content creator gets a share (eg. The platform keeps 10% of the sold price for hosting costs, the 90% remaining are distributed to content creators according to size and quality of the data provided)
    • Consciously donated by the content creators (eg: an OPT-IN term in the platform about donating agreed upon data for non-profit research), but the dataset must never be sold for or used for profit. Publicly available research purposes only.
    • Dataset is “rented” by the users and platform in an OPT-IN manner, and they receive royalties/payments for each purchase/usage of the dataset.

    The current manner things are done only favours venture capitalists (wage thieves), shareholders (also wage thieves) and billionaire C-suits (wage thieves as well).

    Maslo ,

    I can’t really take seriously any accusations coming from Sarah Silverman after that whole wage gap bs she tried to pull.

    Seems like she isn’t afraid to manipulate a trending social outcry to collect a paycheck.

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