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Comment on The Irony of 'You Wouldn't Download a Car' Making a Comeback in AI Debates

But tech-bros that want my work to train their LLMs - they can fuck right off. There are legal thresholds that constitute “fair use” - Is it used for an academic purpose? Is it used for a non-profit use? Is the portion that is being used a small part or the whole thing? LLM software fail all of these tests.

No. It doesn’t.

They can literally pass all of those tests.

You are confusing OpenAI keeping their LLM closed source and charging access to it, with LLMs in general. The open source models that Microsoft and Meta publish for instance, pass literally all of the criteria you just stated.

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Eccitaze@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They literally do not pass the criteria. LLMs use the entirety of a copyrighted work for their training, which fails the “amount and substantiality” factor. By their very nature, LLMs would significantly devalue the work of every artist, author, journalist, and publishing organization, on an industry-wide scale, which fails the “Effect upon work’s value” factor.

Those two alone would be enough for any sane judge to rule that training LLMs would not qualify as fair use, but then you also have OpenAI and other commercial AI companies offering the use of these models for commercial, for-profit purposes, which also fails the “Purpose and character of the use” factor. You could maybe argue that training LLMs is transformative, but the commercial, widespread nature of this infringement would weigh heavily against that. So that’s at least two, and arguably three out of four factors where it falls short.

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- masterspace@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  LLMs use the entirety of a copyrighted work for their training, which fails the “amount and substantiality” factor.
  
  That factor is relative to what is reproduced, not to what is ingested. A company is allowed to scrape the web all they want as long as they don’t republish it.
  
  By their very nature, LLMs would significantly devalue the work of every artist, author, journalist, and publishing organization, on an industry-wide scale, which fails the “Effect upon work’s value” factor.
  
  I would argue that LLMs devalue the author, not the original work they were trained on, but I see your point.
  
  Those two alone would be enough for any sane judge to rule that training LLMs would not qualify as fair use, but then you also have OpenAI and other commercial AI companies offering the use of these models for commercial, for-profit purposes, which also fails the “Purpose and character of the use” factor.
  
  Again, that’s the practice of OpenAI, but not inherent to LLMs.
  
  You could maybe argue that training LLMs is transformative,
  
  It’s honestly absurd to try and argue that they’re not transformative.
  
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  - Eccitaze@yiffit.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    That factor is relative to what is reproduced, not to what is ingested. A company is allowed to scrape the web all they want as long as they don’t republish it.
    
    The work is reproduced in full when it’s downloaded to the server used to train the AI model, and the entirety of the reproduced work is used for training. Thus, they are using the entirety of the work.
    
    I would argue that LLMs devalue the author’s potential for future work, not the original work they were trained on.
    
    And that makes it better somehow? Aereo got sued out of existence because their model threatened the retransmission fees that broadcast TV stations were being paid by cable TV subscribers. There wasn’t any devaluation of broadcasters’ previous performances, the entire harm they presented was in terms of lost revenue in the future. But hey, thanks for agreeing with me?
    
    Again, that’s the practice of OpenAI, but not inherent to LLMs.
    
    And again, LLM training so egregiously fails two out of the four factors for judging a fair use claim that it would fail the test entirely. The only difference is that OpenAI is failing it worse than other LLMs.
    
    It’s honestly absurd to try and argue that they’re not transformative.
    
    It’s even more absurd to claim something that is transformative automatically qualifies for fair use.
    
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