Comment on Japan determines copyright doesn't apply to LLM/ML training data
silverbax@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I think this is a difficult concept to tackle, but the main argument I see about using existing works as ‘training data’ is the idea that ‘everything is a remix’.
I, as a human, can paint an exact copy of a Picasso work or any other artist. This is not illegal and I have no need of a license to do this. I definitely don’t need a license to paint something ‘in the style of Picasso’.
But the question is, what about when a computer does the same thing? What is the difference? Speed? Scale? Anyone can view a picture of the Mona Lisa at any time and make their own painting of it.
I’m not really arguing pro-AI here, although it may sound like it. I’ve just heard the ‘licensing’ argument many times and I’d really like to hear what the difference between a human copying and a computer copying are, if someone knows more about the law.
Here’s the thing… Generative AI had a plagiarism/remix phase. It raised some serious questions about copyright
It lasted for a matter of weeks.
We’re all still stuck up on it, but go to civit.ai
Play with it. Look at what people are creating.
If you’re not convinced, put up a bounty for something extremely specific
Art has changed. There’s no putting it back in the bottle, this is the tiniest leading edge of the singularity
Just a small warning, I just played around with civit. Tried to make some Images, also wanted to try to make some nsfw images. Anyway be really careful what you prompt, I accidentally generated some images with very young people I never intended.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Um - your examples are so old the copyright expired centuries ago. Of course you can copy them.
Painting and selling an exact copy of a recent work, such as Banksy, is a crime.
… however making an exact copy of Banksy for personal use, or to learn, or copying the style… that’s all perfectly legal.
LWD@lemm.ee 8 months ago
And that was the bait and switch of OpenAI! They sold themselves as being a non-profit simply doing research, for which it would be perfectly legal to consume and reproduce large quantities of data… And then, once they had the data, they started selling access to it.
I would say that that alone, along with the fact that they function as gatekeepers to the technology (One does not simply purchase the model from OpenAI, after all) they are hardly free of culpability… But it definitely depends on the person trying to use their black box too.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Huh? What does being non profit have to do with it? Private companies are allowed to learn from copyrighted work. Microsoft and Apple, for example, look at each other’s software and copy ideas (not code, just ideas) all the time. The fact Linux is non-profit doesn’t give them any additional rights.
iegod@lemm.ee 8 months ago
They’re not gatekeeping llms though, there are publicly available models and data sets.
LWD@lemm.ee 8 months ago
If it’s publicly available, why didn’t Microsoft just download and use it rather than paying them for a partnership?
IIRC they only open-sourced some old stuff.
silverbax@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Thanks for your response. I realize I muddied the waters on my question by mentioning exact copies.
My real question is based on the ‘everything is a remix’ idea. I can create a work ‘in the style of Banksy’ and sell it. The US copyright and trademark laws state that a work only has to be 10% differentiated from the original in order to be legal to use, so creating a piece of work that ‘looks like Banky, but not done by Banksy’ is legal.
So since most AI does not create exact copies, this is where I find the licensing argument possibly weak. I really haven’t seen AI like MidJourney creating exact replicas of works - but admittedly, I am not following every single piece of art created on Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion, or DALL-E, or any of the other platforms, and I’m not an expert in the trademarking laws to the extent I can answer these questions.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m pretty sure the law doesn’t say that.
Silentiea@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I don’t have a source to cite, but I did read an article that showed a bad faith actor deliberately trying to use ai to copy images directly, and while the results weren’t exact replicas, they were reasonable facsimiles of the original, to the extent that if a human has created it without ai, it would have been blatant copyright infringement, despite not being quite identical.
I wish I had the examples on hand to show, but it was months ago, and unfortunately I have not the skills nor time to retrieve it.
tabular@lemmy.world 8 months ago
To be at fault the user would have to know the AI creation they distributed commits copyright infringement. How can you tell? Is everyone doing months of research into every creative works to make sure it’s not somewhat like someone else’s?
Even if you had an AI trained on only public domain assets you could still end up putting in the words that generate something copyrighted, and not know.
Companies created a random copyright infringement tool and users randomly infringe copyright.
red@sopuli.xyz 8 months ago
The same way you can tell if you repainted a Banksy yourself. If you don’t realize, and monetize, then you are liable for a copyright lawsuit regardless of the wat you created the piece in question.
tabular@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You may recognize a Banksy but to another it’s like I said you aught to know your work is like one from Coinsey: who?
This is exasperated when people can create creative works via AK, having even less knowledge about your peers who know how to DIY. A potentially life-ruining lawsuit is a bad system to find out you can’t monetize something.
Mango@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Your example is a dude who paints unsolicited on other people’s property. What kind of copyright does a ghost have?
Silentiea@lemm.ee 8 months ago
A surprising amount, though it would potentially be quite difficult to prove.
Mango@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I should paint some shit on your house and then sue you for displaying it.