GenAI tools ‘could not exist’ if firms are made to pay copyright | Computer Weekly
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Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic hits out at copyright lawsuit filed by music publishing corporations, claiming the content ingested into its models falls under ‘fair use’ and that any licensing regime created to manage its use of copyrighted material in training data would be too complex and costly to work in practice

GenAI tools ‘could not exist’ if firms are made to pay copyright::undefined

  • Valen@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15433·
    10 months ago

    So they’re admitting that their entire business model requires them to break the law. Sounds like they shouldn’t exist.

    • Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      6113·
      10 months ago

      It likely doesn’t break the law. You should check out this article by Kit Walsh, a senior staff attorney at the EFF, and this one by Katherine Klosek, the director of information policy and federal relations at the Association of Research Libraries.

      Headlines like these let people assume that it’s illegal, rather than educate people on their rights.

      • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
        64·
        10 months ago

        The Kit Walsh article purposefully handwaves around a couple of issues that could present larger issues as law suits in this arena continue.

        1. He says that due to the size of training data and the model, only a byte of data per image could be stored in any compressed format, but this assumes all training data is treated equally. It’s very possible certain image artifacts are compressed/stored in the weights more than other images.

        2. These models don’t produce exact copies. Beyond the Getty issue, nytimes recently released an article about a near duplicate - https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/01/25/business/ai-image-generators-openai-microsoft-midjourney-copyright.html.

        I think some of the points he makes are valid, but they’re making a lot of assumptions about what is actually going on in these models which we either don’t know for certain or have evidence to the contrary.

        I didn’t read Katherine’s article so maybe there is something more there.

        • Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          54·
          10 months ago

          She addresses both of those, actually. The Midjourney thing isn’t new, It’s the sign of a poorly trained model.

          • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
            42·
            10 months ago

            I’m not sure she does, just read the article and it focuses primarily what models can train on. However, the real meat of the issue, at least I think, with GenAI is what it produces.

            For example, if I built a model that just spit out exact frames from “Space Jam”, I don’t think anyone would argue that would be a problem. The question is where is the line?

            • Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              42·
              10 months ago

              This part does:

              It’s not surprising that the complaints don’t include examples of substantially similar images. Research regarding privacy concerns suggests it is unlikely it is that a diffusion-based model will produce outputs that closely resemble one of the inputs.

              According to this research, there is a small chance that a diffusion model will store information that makes it possible to recreate something close to an image in its training data, provided that the image in question is duplicated many times during training. But the chances of an image in the training data set being duplicated in output, even from a prompt specifically designed to do just that, is literally less than one in a million.

              The linked paper goes into more detail.

              On the note of output, I think you’re responsible for infringing works, whether you used Photoshop, copy & paste, or a generative model. Also, specific instances will need to be evaluated individually, and there might be models that don’t qualify. Midjourney’s new model is so poorly trained that it’s downright easy to get these bad outputs.

              • jacksilver@lemmy.worldEnglish
                32·
                10 months ago

                This goes back to my previous comment of handwaving away the details. There is a model out there that clearly is reproducing copyrighted materials almost identically (nytimes article), we also have issues with models spitting out training data https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-poem-forever-security-roundup/. Clearly people studying these models don’t fully know what is actually possible.

                Additionally, it only takes one instance to show that these models, in general, can and do have issues with regurgitating copyrighted data. Whether that passes the bar for legal consequences we’ll have to see, but i think it’s dangerous to take a couple of statements made by people who don’t seem to understand the unknowns in this space at face value.

                • FatCrab@lemmy.oneEnglish
                  4·
                  9 months ago

                  The ultimate issue is that the models don’t encode the training data in any way that we historically have considered infringement of copyright. This is true for both transformer architectures (gpt) and diffusion ones (most image generators). From a lay perspective, it’s probably good and relatively accurate for our purposes to imagine the models themselves as enormous nets that learn vague, muddled, impressions of multiple portions of multiple pieces of the training data at arbitrary locations within the net. Now, this may still have IP implications for the outputs and here music copyright is pretty instructive, albeit very case-by-case. If a piece is too “inspired” by a particular previous work, even if it is not explicit copying it may still be regarded as infringement of copyright. But, like I said, this is very case specific and precedent cuts both ways on it.

                • Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                  32·
                  10 months ago

                  The article dealt with Stable Diffusion, the only open model that allowed people to study it. If there were more problems with Stable Diffusion, we’d’ve heard of them by now. These are the critical solutions Open-source development offers here. By making AI accessible, we maximize public participation and understanding, foster responsible development, as well as prevent harmful control attempts.

                  As it stands, she was much better informed than you are and is an expert in law to boot. On the other hand, you’re making a sweeping generalization right into an appeal to ignorance. It’s dangerous to assert a proposition just because it has not been proven false.

    • Marcbmann@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4912·
      10 months ago

      Reproduction of copyrighted material would be breaking the law. Studying it and using it as reference when creating original content is not.

      • 1Fuji2Taka3Nasubi@lemmy.zipEnglish
        113·
        10 months ago

        Reproduction of copyrighted material would be breaking the law. Studying it and using it as reference when creating original content is not.

        I’m curious why we think otherwise when it is a student obtaining an unauthorized copy of a textbook to study, or researchers getting papers from sci-hub. Probably because it benefits corporations and they say so?

        • hglman@lemmy.mlEnglish
          2211·
          10 months ago

          So if a tool is involved, it’s no longer ok? So, people with glasses cannot consume copyrighted material?

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
          114·
          10 months ago

          Copyright can only be granted to works created by a human, but I don’t know of any such restriction for fair use. Care to share a source explaining why you think only humans are able to use fair use as a defense for copyright infringement?

          • phdepressed@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            410·
            10 months ago

            Because a human has to use talent+effort to make something that’s fair use. They adapt a product into something that while similar is noticeably different. AI will

            1. make things that are not just similar but not noticeably different.

            2. There’s not an effort in creation. There’s human thought behind a prompt but not on the AI following it.

            3. If allowed to AI companies will basically copyright everything…

            • Harbinger01173430@lemmy.worldEnglish
              43·
              10 months ago

              You are aware of the insane amounts of research, human effort and the type of human talent that is required to make a simple piece of software, let alone a complex artificial neural network model whose function is to try and solve whatever stuff…right?

        • LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          85·
          10 months ago

          What’s the difference? Humans are just the intent suppliers, the rest of the art is mostly made possible by software, whether photoshop or stable diffusion.

        • Marcbmann@lemmy.worldEnglish
          55·
          10 months ago

          I don’t agree. The publisher of the material does not get to dictate what it is used for. What are we protecting at the end of the day and why?

          In the case of a textbook, someone worked hard to explain certain materials in a certain way to make the material easily digestible. They produced examples to explain concepts. Reproducing and disseminating that material would be unfair to the author who worked hard to produce it.

          But the author does not have jurisdiction over the knowledge gained. They cannot tell the reader that they are forbidden from using the knowledge gained to tutor another person in calculus. That would be absurd.

          IP law protects the works of the creator. The author of a calculus textbook did not invent calculus. As such, copyright law does not apply.

      • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
        32·
        10 months ago

        The model itself is a derivative work. It’s existence is what is under dispute. It’s not about using the model to produce further works

        • Marcbmann@lemmy.worldEnglish
          62·
          10 months ago

          Then every single student graduating college produces derivative work.

          Everything that required the underlying knowledge gained from the textbooks studied, or research papers read, is derivative work.

          At the core of this, what are we saying? Your machine could only explain calculus because it was provided information from multiple calculus textbooks? Well, that applies to literally everyone.

      • Telodzrum@lemmy.worldEnglish
        172·
        10 months ago

        This ruling only applies to the 2nd Circuit and SCOTUS has yet to take up a case. As soon as there’s a good fact pattern for the Supreme Court of a circuit split, you’ll get nationwide information. You’ll also note that the decision is deliberately written to provide an extremely narrow precedent and is likely restricted to Google Books and near-identical sources of information.

        • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
          7·
          10 months ago

          Have there been any US ruling stating something along the lines of “The training of general purpose LLMs and/or image generation AIs does not qualify as fair use,” even in a lower court?

        • Eccitaze@yiffit.netEnglish
          21·
          10 months ago

          Hell, that article is also all about Google Books, which is an entirely different beast from generative AI. One of the key points from the circuit judge was that Google Books’ use of copyrighted material “…[maintains] respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.” The appeals court, in upholding the ruling that Google Books’ use of copyrighted content is fair use, ruled “the revelations do not provide a significant market substitute for the protected aspects of the originals.”

          If you think that gen AI doesn’t provide a significant market substitute for the artwork created by the artists and authors used to train these models, or that it doesn’t adversely impact their rights, then you’re utterly delusional.