What is the actual justification for this? Everyone has to pay for this except for AI companies, so AI can continue to develop into a universally regarded negative?
AI doesn’t copy things anymore than a person copies them by attending a concert or museum.
This is such a bizarre rejection of reality
Yeah this scum probably downloaded a few cars back in the days
why do you say AI is a universally regarded negative?
Because pretty much nobody wants it or likes it.
That’s just not true, chatgpt & co are hugely popular, which is a big part of the issue.
Nazism was hugely popular in Germany in the early 20th century, but was it a good thing?
Hugely popular, mostly with a bunch of dorks nobody likes that much.
People are getting the message now, but when it first came out, there were so many posts about what ChatGPT had to say about the topic, and the posters never seemed to understand why nobody cared.
I don’t know the rest but I hate the spending of resources to feed the AI datacenters. It’s not normal building a nuclear powerplant to feed ONE data center.
Because overall people don’t like it, particularly when it comes to creating “art.”
I am aware of a lot of people who are very gung-ho about AI. I don’t know if anybody has actually tried to make a comprehensive survey about people’s disposition toward AI. I wouldn’t expect Lemmy to be representative.
I mean honestly this AI era is the time for these absurd anti-piracy penalties to be enforced. Meta downloads libgen? $250,000 per book plus jail time to the person who’s responsible.
Oh but laws aren’t for the rich and powerful you see!
Always have been. Jpeg
Normal people pirate: one hundred bazillion dollars fine for download The Hangover.
One hundred bazillion dollars company pirate: special law to say it okay because poor company no can exist without pirate 😞
If AI companies can pirate, so can individuals.
You know I am somewhat of a large language model myself.
At this rate we will get access to more rights if we can figure out a way to legally classify ourselves as AI.
Is the ai doing anything that isn’t already allowed for humans. The thing is, generative ai doesn’t copy someone’s art. It’s more akin to learning from someone’s art and creating you own art with that influence. Given that we want to continue allowing hunans access to art for learning, what’s the logical difference to an ai doing the same?
Did this already play out at Reddit? Ai was one of the reasons I left but I believe it’s a different scenario. I freely contributed my content to Reddit for the purposes of building an interactive community, but they changed the terms without my consent. I did NOT contribute my content so they could make money selling it for ai training
The only logical distinction I see with s ai aren’t human: an exception for humans does not apply to non-humans even if the activity is similar
Is the ai doing anything that isn’t already allowed for humans. The thing is, generative ai doesn’t copy someone’s art. It’s more akin to learning from someone’s art and creating you own art with that influence. Given that we want to continue allowing hunans access to art for learning, what’s the logical difference to an ai doing the same?
AI stans always say stuff like this, but it doesn’t make sense to me at all.
AI does not learn the same way that a human does: it has no senses of its own with which to observe the world or art, it has no lived experiences, it has no agency, preferences or subjectivity, and it has no real intelligence with which to interpret or understand the work that it is copying from. AI is simply a matrix of weights that has arbitrary data superimposed on it by people and companies.
Are you an artist or a creative person?
If you are then you must know that the things you create are certainly indirectly influenced by SOME of the things that you have experienced (be it walking around on a sunny day, your favorite scene from your favorite movie, the lyrics of a song, etc.), AS WELL AS your own unique and creative persona, your own ideas, your own philosophy, and your own personal development.
Look at how an artist creates a painting and compare it to how generative AI creates a painting. Similarly, look at how artists train and learn their craft and compare it to how generative AI models are trained. It’s an apples-to-oranges comparison. Outside of the marketing labels of “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning”, it’s nothing like real intelligence or learning at all.
(And that’s still ignoring the obvious corporate element and the four pillars of fair use consideration (US law, not UK, mind you). For example, the potential market effects of generating an automated system which uses people’s artwork to directly compete against them.)
Just say you’re a disc Majors shill lmao. This is Metallica vs Napster all over again
Outside of the marketing labels of “artificial intelligence” and “machine learning”, it’s nothing like real intelligence or learning at all.
Generative AI uses artificial neural networks, which are based on how we understand brains to connect information (Biological neural networks). You’re right that they have no self generated input like humans do, but their sense of making connections between information is very similar to that of humans. It doesn’t really matter that they don’t have their own experiences, because they are not trying to be humans, they are trying to be as flexible of a ‘mind’ as possible.
Are you an artist or a creative person?
I see anti-AI people say this stuff all the time too. Because it’s a convenient excuse to disregard an opposing opinion as ‘doesn’t know art’, failing to realize or respect that most people have some kind of creative spark and outlet. And I know it wasn’t aimed at me, but before you think I’m dodging the question, I’m a creative working professionally with artists and designers.
Professional creative people and artists use AI too. A lot. Probably more than laypeople, because to use it well and combine it with other interesting ideas, requires a creative and inventive mind. There’s a reason AI is making it’s way all over media, into movies, into games, into books. And I don’t mean as AI slop, but well-implemented, guided AI usage.
I could ask you as well if you’ve ever studied programming, or studied psychology, as those things would all make you more able to understand the similarities between artificial neural networks and biological neural networks. But I don’t need a box to disregard you, the substance of your argument fails to convince me.
At the end of the day, it does matter that humans have their own experiences to mix in. But AI can also store much, much more influences than a human brain can. That effectively means for everything it makes, there is less of a specific source in there from specific artists.
For example, the potential market effects of generating an automated system which uses people’s artwork to directly compete against them.
Fair use considerations do not apply to works that are so substantially different from any influence, only when copyrighted material is directly re-used. If you read Harry Potter and write your own novel about wizards, you do not have to credit nor pay royalties to JK Rowling, so long as it isn’t substantially similar. Without any additional laws prohibiting such, AI is no different. To sue someone over fair use, you typically do have to prove that it infringes on your work, and so far there have not been any successful cases with that argument.
Most negative externalities from AI come from capitalism: Greedy bosses thinking they can replace true human talent with a machine, plagiarists that use it as a convenient tool to harass specific artists, scammers that use it to scam people. But around that exists an entire ecosystem of people just using it for what it should be used for: More and more creativity.
You picked the wrong thread for a nuanced question on a controversial topic.
But it seems the UK indeed has laws for this already if the article is to believed, as they don’t currently allow AI companies to train on copyrighted material (As per the article). As far as I know, in some other jurisdictions, a normal person would absolutely be allowed to pull a bunch of publicly available information, learn from it, and decide to make something new based on objective information that can be found within. And generally, that’s the rationale AI companies used as well, seeing as there have been landmark cases ruled in the past to not be copyright infringement with wide acceptance for computers analyzing copyrighted information, such as against Google, for indexing copyrighted material in their search results. But perhaps an adjacent ruling was never accepted in the UK (which does seem strange, as Google does operate there). But laws are messy, and perhaps there is an exception somewhere, and I’m certainly not an expert on UK law.
But people sadly don’t really come into this thread to discuss the actual details, they just see a headline that invokes a feeling of “AI Bad”, and so you coming in here with a reasonable question makes you a target. I wholly expect to be downvoted as well.
Oh are we giving AI the same rights as humans now? On what grounds?
I never claimed that in this case. As I said in my response: There have been won lawsuits that machines are allowed to index and analyze copyrighted material without infringing on such rights, so long as they only extract objective information, such as what AI typically extracts. I’m not a lawyer, and your jurisdiction may differ, but this page has a good overview: https://blog.apify.com/is-web-scraping-legal/
EDIT: For the US description on that page, it mentions the US case that I referred to: Author’s Guild v Google
You might not remember but decades ago Microsoft was almost split in two. But then it came to pass that George Bush “won” the elections. And the case was dismissed.
In the US justice system, money talks.
Oh I agree money talks in the US justice system, but as the page shows, these laws also exist elsewhere, such as in the EU. And even if I or you don’t agree with them, they are still the case law that determines the legality of these things. For me that aligns with my ethical stance as well, but probably not yours.
Disband Copyright
Either get rid of copyright for everything and everyone, or don’t.
But no stupid BULLSHIT exception for AI slop.
- There’s a practical concern: how do you prevent ai without preventing people.
- What if you want to allow search, and how is that different than ai, legally or in practice?
- Does this put Reddit in a new light? Free content to users but charging for the api to do bulk download such as for ai?
Search is very different to create something.
hello yes I’m an ai company. let me torrent all the things pls thank you
That’s exactly what Meta did, they torrented the full libgen database of books.
If they can do it, anybody should be able to do it.
I like how their whole excuse to that was “WE DIDN’T SEED ANY OF IT BACK THOUGH” which arguably makes it even worse lol.
Zuck would be a hit and runner…
It doesn’t. You can download anything you want, distribution is what is illegal and criminal.
Downloading is still infringement. Distribution is worse, but I don’t think it’s a criminal matter, still just civil.
Maybe in some weird countries.
Torrent means you download and also upload to others when you have some parts.
Technically it was never illegal in the US to download copywritten content. It was illegal to distribute them. That was literally Meta’s defence in court: they didn’t seed any downloads.
they didn’t seed any downloads
So Meta, 100% leeching.
My mind is AI and I need this content to train it.
I’m not sure if my brain counts as artificial, but with all the microplastics, it sure ain’t organic.
Yeah no, only a select few special Ai companies, of course
should start up our own ai company anyone is free to join
I identify as an AI company ☠️
no no, i mean people should actually start utilizing this bullshit. Anyone can start a company and with some technical knowhow you can add somekind of ai crap to it. companies dont have to make profit or anything useful so there is no pressure to do anything with it.
But if it comes to copyright law not applying to ai companies, why should some rich assholes be only ones exploiting that? It might lead to some additional legal bullshit that excludes this hypotetical kind of ai company, but that would also highlight better that the law benefits only the rich.
No more ads on youtube
They are just illegally selling us off as slaves. That is what is happening. All our fault for not having strong citizen watchdogs, clamping down on this behavior.
Oh good I see Labour are dealing with the real issues in society.
Modern Labour and not giving a fuck about workers, name a more iconic duo.
I mean they were trained on copyrighted material and nothing has been done about that so…
So abolish copyright law entirely instead of only allowing theft when capitalists do it.
Exactly. Paul Mc Cartney have been trained on copyrighted material and should give his money back to the majors
That is definitely one of the most cooked takes I’ve heard in a while.
Why would anyone create anything if it can immediately be copied with no compensation to you?
I don’t see how allowing AI robbery barons to steal copyrighted material would benefit a small fish in the pond of IP
Creation happened before intellectual property laws existed.
Creation happens that can be immediately copied with no compensation now, open source software is an example.
How many authors do you think would have written the books they did, if they weren’t able to make a living from their work? Most of the people creating works before copyright either had a patron of some description, or outright worked for an organisation.
You should read the opinion of Stephen King about that precise point. The short version: “I’d write books even if it was illegal”.
The specific works? Who knows. It’s irrelevant
My point is your original premise was wrong. Creation DID happen without IP laws. People DO create with out the need for compensation/copy protection.
I propose, people will create things because they always have.
I think copyright should last maximum 10 years. Plenty of time to earn enough from your creation.
Imagine how advanced we would be, as a civilization, if everything created before 2015 was free for everybody.
Honestly, I think our world would be a lot blander, and we’d have a whole lot less original content.
You probably only consume Hollywood prechewed crap and universal soup they call “music”
Creation is its own incentive.
And I can buy groceries with thoughts and prayers.
Maybe you can download them. Apparently download is theft
Do you make any money out of copyrights?
You know that for the vast majority of human history copyright didn’t exist, and yet people still created art and culture, right?
edit: If you’re gonna downvote, have the balls to explain how I’m wrong.
The original copyright law was created to protect authors from publishers. The current law is an abomination and should be removed.
You’re probably right, but saying we should abolish it altogether is insane. There’s a good reason we have these laws.
There are no good reasons.
Really? Artists getting paid for their work isn’t a good reason?
ArTistS gettiNg paId (after universal gets a 40% cuts because you used the snare sample from Taylor swift ofc)
You don’t need a copyright for that. Copyright doesn’t pay anyone anything.
It only seems to make a difference when the rich ones complain.
I’m naming my torrent client “AI” and now I have the right to download a car.
But downloading and illegally using that font is okay?
Yes.
Because you have the money and plausible deniability to get away with it if it weren’t for those meddling kids and their dog.
and the music
On the other hand copyright laws have been extended to insane time lengths. Sorry but your grandkids shouldn’t profit off of you.
It’s never the grandkids. The Beatles sold the rights to their songs.
In theory, could you then just register as an AI company and pirate anything?
You can already just pirate anything. In fact, downloading copyrighted content is not illegal in most countries just distributing is.
Well no, just the largest ones who can pay some fine or have nearly endless legal funds to discourage challenges to their practice, this bring a form of a pretend business moat. The average company won’t be able to and will get shredded.
What fine? I thought this new law allows it. Or is it one of those instances where training your AI on copyrighted material and distributing it is fine but actually sourcing it isn‘t so you can‘t legally create a model but also nobody can do anything if you have and use it? That sounds legally very messy.
You’re assuming most of the commentors here are familiar with the legal technicalities instead of just spouting whatever uninformed opinion they have.
No, because training an AI is not “pirating.”
Well I agree in principle (I disagree that AI training is necessarily “stealing”), but downloading copyrighted material for which you do not own a license is textbook piracy, regardless of intent
If they are training the AI with copyrighted data that they aren’t paying for, then yes, they are doing the same thing as traditional media piracy. While I think piracy laws have been grossly blown out of proportion by entities such as the RIAA and MPAA, these AI companies shouldn’t get a pass for doing what Joe Schmoe would get fined thousands of dollars for on a smaller scale.
In fact when you think about the way organizations like RIAA and MPAA like to calculate damages based on lost potential sales they pull out of thin air training an AI that might make up entire songs that compete with their existing set of songs should be even worse. (not that I want to encourage more of that kind of bullshit potential sales argument)
The act of copying the data without paying for it (assuming it’s something you need to pay for to get a copy of) is piracy, yes. But the training of an AI is not piracy because no copying takes place.
A lot of people have a very vague, nebulous concept of what copyright is all about. It isn’t a generalized “you should be able to get money whenever anyone does anything with something you thought of” law. It’s all about making and distributing copies of the data.
the training of an AI is not piracy because no copying takes place.
One of the first steps of training is to copy the data into the training data set.
Where does the training data come from seems like the main issue, rather than the training itself. Copying has to take place somewhere for that data to exist. I’m no fan of the current IP regime but it seems like an obvious problem if you get caught making money with terabytes of content you don’t have a license for.
the slippery slope here is that you as an artist hear music on the radio, in movies and TV, commercials. All this hearing music is training your brain. If an AI company just plugged in an FM radio and learned from that music I’m sure that a lawsuit could start to make it that no one could listen to anyone’s music without being tainted.
That feels categorically different unless AI has legal standing as a person. We’re talking about training LLMs, there’s not anything more than people using computers going on here.
So then anyone who uses a computer to make music would be in violation?
Or is it some amount of computer generated content? How many notes? If its not a sample of a song, how does one know how much of those notes are attributed to which artist being stolen from?
What if I have someone else listen to a song and they generate a few bars of a song for me? Is it different that a computer listened and then generated output?
To me it sounds like artists were open to some types of violations but not others. If an AI model listened to the radio most of these issues go away unless we are saying that humans who listen to music and write similar songs are OK but people who write music using computers who calculate the statistically most common song are breaking the law.
A lot of the griping about AI training involves data that’s been freely published. Stable Diffusion, for example, trained on public images available on the internet for anyone to view, but led to all manner of ill-informed public outrage. LLMs train on public forums and news sites. But people have this notion that copyright gives them some kind of absolute control over the stuff they “own” and they suddenly see a way to demand a pound of flesh for what they previously posted in public. It’s just not so.
I have the right to analyze what I see. I strongly oppose any move to restrict that right.
Publically available =/= freely published
Many images are made and published with anti AI licenses or are otherwise licensed in a way that requires attribution for derivative works.
The problem with those things is that the viewer doesn’t need that license in order to analyze them. They can just refuse the license. Licenses don’t automatically apply, you have to accept them. And since they’re contracts they need to offer consideration, not just place restrictions.
An AI model is not a derivative work, it doesn’t include any identifiable pieces of the training data.
It’s also pretty clear they used a lot of books and other material they didn’t pay for, and obtained via illegal downloads. The practice of which I’m fine with, I just want it legalised for everyone.
I’m wondering when i go to the library and read a book, does this mean i can never become an author as I’m tainted? Or am I only tainted if I stole the book?
To me this is only a theft case.
And what of the massive amount of content paywalled that ai still used to train?
If it’s paywalled how did they access it?
This isn’t quite correct either.
The reality is that there’s a bunch of court cases and laws still up in the air about what AI training counts as, and until those are resolved the most we can make is conjecture and vague moral posturing.
Closest we have is likely the court decisions on music sampling and so far those haven’t been consistent, and have mostly hinged on “intent” and “affect on original copy sales”. So based on that logic whether or not AI training counts as copyright infringement is likely going to come down to whether or not shit like “ghibli filters” actually provably (at least as far as a judge is concerned) fuck with Ghibli’s sales.
court decisions on music sampling and so far those haven’t been consistent,
Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. (1991) - Rapper Biz Markie sampled Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” without permission
Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films (2005) - any unauthorized sampling, no matter how minimal, is infringement.
VMG Salsoul v. Ciccone (2016) - to determine whether use was de minimis it must be considered whether an average audience would recognize appropriation from the original work as present in the accused work.
Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. (1994) - This case established that the fact that money is made by a work does not make it impossible for fair use to apply; it is merely one of the components of a fair use analysis
That case is about fair use for parody.
Case law suggests using AI for parody is legal.
So streaming is fine but copying not
Streaming involves distributing copies so I don’t see why it would be. The law has been well tested in this area.
Well how does the AI company consume the content?
Which company us “the AI company?”
Copyrighted material can be used or reproduced only with a license that allows for it. If the license forbids you from using the copyrighted material for business purposes, and you do it anyway, then it’s pirating.
It’s exploiting copyrighted content without a licence, so, in short, it’s pirating.
“Exploiting copyrighted content” is an incredibly vague concept that is not illegal. Copyright is about distributing copies of copyrighted content.
If I am given a copyrighted book, there are plenty of ways that I can exploit that book that are not against copyright. I could make paper airplanes out of its pages. I could burn it for heat. I could even read it and learn from its contents. The one thing I can’t do is distribute copies of it.
It’s not only about copying or distribution, but also use and reproduction. I can buy a legit DVD and play it in my own home and all is fine. Then I play it on my bar’s tv, in front of 100 people, and now it’s illegal. I can listen to a song however many times I want, but I can’t use it for anything other than private listening. In theory you should pay even if you want to make a video montage to show at your wedding.
Right now most licenses for copyrighted material specify that you use said material only for personal consumption. To use it for profit you need a special license
It’s about making copies, not just distributing them, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to be bound by a software eula because I wouldn’t need a license to copy the content to my computer ram to run it.
The enforceability of EULAs varies with jurisdiction and with the actual contents of the EULA. It’s by no means a universally accepted thing.
It’s funny how suddenly large chunks of the Internet are cheering on EULAs and copyright enforcement by giant megacorporations because they’ve become convinced that AI is Satan.
I’m absolutely against the idea of EULAs but the fact remains they are only enforceable because it’s the copying that is the reserved right, not the distribution. If it was distribution then second hand sales would be prohibitable (though thanks to going digital only that loop hole is getting pulled shut slowly but surely).
Again, they are not universally enforceable. There are plenty of jurisdictions where they are not.
