this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
197 points (99.5% liked)

Technology

58142 readers
4678 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, has been secretly using OpenAI's technology to develop its own competing large language model (LLM). "This practice is generally considered a faux pas in the AI world," writes The Verge's Alex Heath. "It's also in direct violation of OpenAI's terms of service, which state that its model output can't be used 'to develop any artificial intelligence models that compete with our products and services.'"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sorry for the late reply, but this doesn't really seem like it'd come close to invoking any of the US's neutered antitrust enforcement. Open AI doesn't have a monopoly position to abuse, since there are other large firms offering LLMs that see reasonable amounts of usage. This clause amounts more to an effort to stop reverse engineering than stifle anyone trying to build an LLM.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I doubt if it is clear-cut enough to bring down enforcement in any case. However, that does not mean that the clause is enforceable.

It is easy to circumvent such a ban. Eventually, the only option that MS has is suing. Then what?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Why would the clause be unenforceable? It doesn't violate any of the general principles of contract law. If you intentionally contract around these terms that don't violate any existing body of law and don't run counter to public interest, a court would have no problem enforcing the terms of a contract. They probably wouldn't sue you or me in our individual capacity if we circumvented. There's a much greater chance of recovery if they go after a company which is pretty clearly using their service in a bad faith. If ByteDance wanted to use their LLM to train their own, they could've negotiated such a license.