In its submission to the Australian government’s review of the regulatory framework around AI, Google said that copyright law should be altered to allow for generative AI systems to scrape the internet.
Copyright law already allows generative AI systems to scrape the internet. You need to change the law to forbid something, it isn’t forbidden by default. Currently, if something is published publicly then it can be read and learned from by anyone (or anything) that can see it. Copyright law only prevents making copies of it, which a large language model does not do when trained on it.
An AI model is a derivative work of its training data and thus a copyright violation if the training data is copyrighted.
It is not a derivative work, the model does not contain any recognizable part of the original material that it was trained on.
Except when it produces exact copies of existing works, or when it includes a recognisable signature or watermark?
A human is a derivative work of its training data, thus a copyright violation if the training data is copyrighted.
The difference between a human and ai is getting much smaller all the time. The training process is essentially the same at this point, show them a bunch of examples and then have them practice and provide feedback.
If that human is trained to draw on Disney art, then goes on to create similar style art for sale that isn’t a copyright infringement. Nor should it be.
a human does not copy previous work exactly like these algorithms, whats this shit take?
This is stupid and I’ll tell you why.
As humans, we have a perception filter. This filter is unique to every individual because it’s fed by our experiences and emotions. Artists make great use of this by producing art which leverages their view of the world, it’s why Van Gogh or Picasso is interesting because they had a unique view of the world that is shown through their work.
These bots do not have perception filters. They’re designed to break down whatever they’re trained on into numbers and decipher how the style is constructed so it can replicate it. It has no intention or purpose behind any of its decisions beyond straight replication.
You would be correct if a human’s only goal was to replicate Van Gogh’s style but that’s not every artist. With these art bots, that’s the only goal that they will ever have.
I have to repeat this every time there’s a discussion on LLM or art bots:
The imitation of intelligence does not equate to actual intelligence.
Derivative works are only copyright violations when they replicate substantial portions of the original without changes.
The entirety of human civilization is derivative works. Derivative works aren’t infringement.
A lot of licensing prevents or constrains creating derivative works and monetizing them. The question is for example if you train an AI on GPL code, does the output of the model constitute a derivative work?
If yes, Github Copilot is illegal as it produces code that should comply to multiple conflicting license requirements. If no, I can write some simple AI that is “trained” to regurgitate its output on a prompt, and run a leaked copy of Windows through it, then go around selling Binbows and MSFT can’t do anything about it.
The truth is mostly between the two, this is just piracy, which always has been a gray area because of the difficulty of prosecuting it, previously because the perpetrators were many and hard to find, now it’s because the perpetrators are billion dollar companies with expensive lawyer teams.
then go around selling Binbows and MSFT can’t do anything about it
I think this already happen. A very practical example, windows GUI has been copied by many Linus distros. And with windows 11 there’s clearly a reference to Apple MacOS GUI with a sparkling of Google material design.
Should apple and Google be able to sue Microsoft because it “copied” their work? Should Google be able to sue apple because they “copied” the notification drop-down in iOS?
As you say it’s really a grey area because the only reason we consider AI code to be “regurgitated” while human code to be “inspired” is only because we give humans more recognition of their intellectual abilities.
The question is for example if you train an AI on GPL code, does the output of the model constitute a derivative work?
This question is completely independent of whether the code was generated by an AI or a human. You compare code A with code B, and if the judge and jury agree that code A is a derivative work of code B then you win the case. If the two bodies of work don’t have sufficient similarities then they aren’t derivative.
If no, I can write some simple AI that is “trained” to regurgitate its output on a prompt
You’ve reinvented copy-and-paste, not an “AI.” AIs are deliberately designed to not copy-and-paste. What would be the point of one that did? Nobody wants that.
Filtering the code through something you call an AI isn’t going to have any impact on whether you get sued. If the resulting code looks like copyrighted code, then you’re in trouble. If it doesn’t look like copyrighted code then you’re fine.
If the resulting code looks like copyrighted code, then you’re in trouble. If it doesn’t look like copyrighted code then you’re fine.
^^ Very much this.
Loads of people are treating the process of AI creating works as either violating copyright or not. But that is not how copyright works. It applies to the output of a process not the process itself. If someone ends up writing something that happens to be a copy of something they read before - that is a violation of copy write laws. If someone uses various works and creates something new and unique then that is not a violation. It does not - at this point in time at least - matter if that someone is a real person or an AI.
AI can both violate copy write on one work and not on another. Each case is independent and would need to be legislated differently. But AI can produce so much content so quickly that it creates a real problem for a case by case analysis of copy write infringement. So it is quite likely the laws will need to change to account for this and will likely need to treat AI works differently from human created works. Which is a very hard thing to actually deal with.
Now, one could also argue the model itself is a violation of copyright. But that IMO is a stretch - a model is nothing like the original work and the copyright law also does not cover this case. It would need to be taken to court to really decide on if this is allowed or not.
Personally I don’t think the conversation should be on what the laws currently allow - they were not designed for this. But instead what the laws should allow. So we can steer the conversation towards a better future. Lots of artists are expressing their distaste for AI models to be trained on their works - if enough people do this laws can be crafted to backup this view.
AIs are deliberately designed to not copy-and-paste.
AI is a marketing term, not a technical one. You can call anything “AI”, but it’s usually predictive models that get called that.
AIs are deliberately designed to not copy-and-paste. What would be the point of one that did? Nobody wants that.
For example if the powers that be decided to say licenses don’t apply once you feed material through an “AI”, and failed to define AI, you could say you wrote this awesome OS using an AI that you trained exclusively using Microsoft proprietary code. Their licenses and copyright and stuff doesn’t apply to AI training data so you could sell that new code your AI just created.
It doesn’t even have to be 100% identical to Windows source code. What if it’s just 80%? 50%? 20%? 5%? Where is the bar where the author can claim “that’s my code!”?
Just to compare, the guys who set out to reimplement Win32 APIs for use in Linux (the thing that made it into MacOS as well now) deliberately would not accept help from anyone who ever saw any Microsoft source code for fear of being sued. The bar was that high when it was a small FOSS organization doing it. It was 0%, proven beyond a doubt.
Now that Microsoft is the author, it’s not a problem when Github Copilot spits out GPL code word for word, ironically together with its license.
