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‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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So if I look at a painting study it and then emulate the original painter's artstyle, then I'm in breach of their copyright?
Or if I read a lot of fantasy like GRRM or JK Rowling and I also write a fantasy book and say, that they were my Inspiration, I'm breaching their copyright??
That's not how it works, and if it is, it shouldn't be!
Sure, if a start reproducing work, i.e. plagiarizing the work of others, then I'm doing sth wrong.
And to spin this further: If I raise a child on children's books by a specific author, am I breaching copyright, when my child enters the workforce and starts to earn money???? Stupid, yes! But so are the copyright claims against LLMs, in my opinion.
I don't think it's accurate to call the work of AI the same as the human brain, but most importantly, the difference is that humans and tools have and should have different rights. Someone can't simply point a camera at a picture and say "I can look at it with my eye and keep it in my memory, so why can't the camera?"
Because we ensure the right of learning for people. That doesn't mean it's a free pass to technologically process works however one sees fit.
Nevermind that the more people prodded AIs, the more they have found that the reproductions are much more identical than simply vaguely replicating style from them. People have managed to get whole sentences from books and obvious copies of real artwork, copyrighted characters and celebrities by prompting AI in specific ways.
To be fair, I think your analogy falls apart a bit because you can in fact take a picture of pretty much any art you want to, legally speaking.
You can't go sell it or anything, but you are definitely not in breach of copyright just by taking the picture.
That's a rebuttal on the level of "if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it". Legally, theoretically, you should need permission just as much, but nobody is going to sue you over something nobody else sees.
Copyright addresses reproduction and distribution, paid or not, including derivative works. There are exemptions for journalism and education, AI advanced a lot by using copyrighted materials under the reasoning that it was technological research, but as it spun off into commercial use, its reliance on copyrighted materials for training has become much more questionable.
Copyright law only works because most violations are not feasible to prosecute. A world where copyright laws are fully enforced would be an authoritarian dystopia where all art and science is owned by wealthy corporations.
Copyright law is inherently authoritarian. The conversation we should have been having for the last 100 years isn't about how much we'll tolerate technical violations of copyright law; it's how much we'll tolerate the chilling effect of copyright law on sharing for the sake of promoting new creative works.
Absolutely and I'm with you on that. I think Copyright is excessively long and overly restrictive.
But that is another conversation.
The conversation we are having now is how to protect and compensate human creators that need their livelihoods to keep creating in our society as it is, when these new AI tools, trained on their works, are used to deliberately replace them.
There are many issues with copyright as it is right now, but it is literally the only resort that artists have left in this situation. It's not a given that opposing copyright hinders corporations. In this particular case there are many corporations salivating at the opportunity to replace human creators with AI, to get faster work, cheaper, to appropriate distinctive styles without needing to hire the people who developed them.
There is a chilling effect on its own happening here. There are writers and artists today that are seeing their jobs handed to AI, which decide creative works are not a feasible career to have anymore. Not only this is tragic by virtue of human interest alone, since AI relies on human creators to be trained, it's very possible that they will spiral into recursive derivativeness and become increasingly stale, devoid of fresh ideas and styles.
Oh now I won't get a 19th Transformers movie or a 24th Fast and the Furious movie. How about this: you fix copyright law such that Disney doesn't get an infinite ownership of Mickey Mouse for all time and then we will talk about a chatbot.
That is just avoiding the issues with some tenuously related outrage. AI will not cause or prevent a 24th Fast and Furious movie from being made, it's an established brand with plenty of investor backing. If AIs require a massive library of owned IP to train, Universal can use it. If it doesn't, they still can use it. If the suggestion here is that some upcoming AI creator is going to take down Fast and Furious and soulless corporate media... I don't see any reason whatsoever why this might happen.
But many small independent artists with a couple thousand followers or upcoming artists improving their skills working for media companies will have their opportunities cut short if AI is used as a substitute for their work. It's not Mickey that is going to suffer, it's small creators who have true passion.
But ignoring that because "Copyright Bad"? That ain't it chief. The world is not quite so simple.
The copyright system we have now is not good and I am surprised people are defending something not worth defending. As for the mythical struggling artist killed by AI please show me them.
Mythical? Way to spell out that you don't keep up with one single artist or the struggles they face.
Like I said before, I agree that the Copyright system is severely flawed and it needs a complete overhaul. Because the law that is intended to protect and support creators should do just that instead of being a tool for corporate control and profits. Even creators of derivative works ought to have better protections than they have now. It should enable them to maintain a livelihood and continue creating, which benefits our whole culture by the introduction of new ideas and aesthetics.
It shouldn't, though, enable their replacement.
But hey, you couldn't make any more clearer that you don't give a single fuck about any of that. What, do you just hate Copyright because you want free shit?
Name the artist. Name the artist that has gone broke solely because chatgpt copied their work. One single name.
You think you got a gotcha there, don't you? No need to discuss it in a measured way if you can take a single debatable point and cling to it like your life depend on it.
By definition I can't know if one artist truly quit or not or why if they aren't posting anymore. They might simply disappear. Also, commercial use of AI is just starting to ramp up so expecting the impacts to be immediately observable else it isn't happening, is just not a reasonable way to evaluate the situation.
The point of AI is to make creation of text, images and audio faster and easier without any human effort. It's only logical to expect it to substitute people's work.
I have heard people saying things about how AI is already being used for roles that would employ people. If you want names and proof of full bankruptcy you can go look into it yourself. But I'm not going to make a full investigative essay for someone who's making bad faith single sentence responses.
Though thinking of it, wasn't this news article posted in this very community? Duolingo lays off staff as language learning app shifts toward AI Well, the way you are acting you might just say "oh but that's not an artist", to try to 'win' the argument on a technicality, despite proof of AI usage leading to job losses.
Cool. You can't name a single artist that lost their job because AI stole their work. I am glad you agree that this "crime" has no victim and it is just TERF shits like Rowling trying to get more money. Thank you for being open minded enough to change your views based on evidence.
Oh look at that, exactly the type of shallow pedant response I thought you would give, and even spiced up with completely unrelated guilt by association. You know, as if Rowling was the only writer ever and no poor trans artist existed.
🙄
As expected, you straight up pretended you didn't see the Duolingo thing. Truly words are wasted on you, you can't even be stubborn in a challenging way. I'm done with you.
Please pay me fifty dollars for describing what I wrote as it was under copyright
That's not a thing. There is a right to an education, but that is not about copyright (though it may imply the necessity of fair use exceptions in certain contexts).
Also, you are confused about AI output. It's possible to make the AI spit out training data, but it takes, indeed, prodding. It's unlikely to matter by US law.
You're comparing something humans often do subconsciously to a machine that was programmed to do that. Unless you're arguing that intent doesn't matter ~~(pretty much every judge in America will tell you it does)~~ then we're talking about 2 completely different things.
Edit: Disregard the struck out portion of my comment. Apparently I don't know shit about law. My point is that comparing a a quirk of human psychology to the strict programming of a machine is a false equivalency.
Intent does not matter for copyright infringement, it’s a strict liability.
I looked it up and you're right. I must of been thinking of a different crime. That'll teach me to go spouting off about stuff.
My point that AI is programmed to recycle and humans aren't is still something I stand by, so I edited my comment.
Another proof that it is a bullshit law. Someone could literally die on my property and there are situations where I would not even get a small fine.