• gregorum@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      It’s different when you earn profit from another person’s work.

      • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Right, so I suppose George Lucas was stealing from all the movies that inspired his work when he made Star Wars. Or when Mel Brooks made Space Balls, as a more blatant example

        • gregorum@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Mel Brooks’s works are protected under the Fair Use provisions for satire under the DMCA. Lucas never copied anything directly, but, if pressed, much of his work is “heavily inspired” by works in the public domain and/or could be argued to be “derivative works”, also covered by Fair Use provisions in the DMCA, although any claim of copyright violation would be pretty difficult to make in the first place.

          • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            And the same can be said about generative AI

            If it’s not redistributed copyrighted material, it’s not theft

            • gregorum@lemm.ee
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              9 months ago

              And the same can be said about generative AI

              not in any legally reasonable way, and certainly not by anyone who understands how AI (or, really, LLM models) work or what art is.

              If it’s not redistributed copyrighted material, it’s not theft

              but that’s exactly what OpenAI did-- they used distributed, copyrighted works, used them as training data, and spit out result, some of which even contained word-for-word repetitions of the author’s source material.

              AI, unlike a human, cannot create unique works of art. it can old produce an algorithmically-derived malange of its source-data recomposited in novel forms, but nothing resembling the truly unique creative process of a living human. Sadly, too many people simply lack the ability to comprehend the difference.

              • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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                9 months ago

                it can old produce an algorithmically-derived malange of its source-data recomposited in novel forms

                Right, it produces derivative data. Not copyrighted material.

                By itself without any safeguards, it absolutely could output copyrighted data, (albeit probably not perfectly but for copyright purposes that’s irrelevant as long as it serves as a substitute). And any algorithms that do do that should be punished, but OpenAI’s models can’t do that.

                Hammers aren’t bad because they can be used for bludgeoning, and if we have a hammer that somehow detects that it’s being used for murder and then evaporates, calling it bad is even more ridiculous.

                • gregorum@lemm.ee
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                  9 months ago

                  Some safeguards have been added which curtail certain direct misbehavior, but it is still capable - by your own admission - of doing it. And it still profits from the unlicensed use of copyrighted works by using such material for its training data. Because what it is producing is not a new and unique creative work, it is a composite of copyrighted work. That is not the same thing.

                  And if you are comparing LLMs and hammers, you’re just proving how you fundamentally misunderstand what LLMs are and how they work. It’s a false equivalence.

                  • A_Very_Big_Fan@lemmy.world
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                    9 months ago

                    but it is still capable - by your own admission - of doing it

                    And if you are comparing LLMs and hammers, you’re just proving how you fundamentally misunderstand what LLMs are and how they work

                    And a regular hammer is capable of being used for murder. Which makes calling a hammer that evaporates before it can be used for murder “unethical” ridiculous. You’re deliberately missing the point.

                    And it still profits from the unlicensed use of copyrighted works by using such material for its training data

                    I just don’t buy this reasoning. If I look at paintings of the Eiffel Tower and then sell my own painting of the building, I’m not violating the copyright of any of the original painters unless what I paint is so similar to one of theirs that it violates fair use.

                    it is a composite of copyrighted work

                    It’s stable diffusion, not a composite. But even if they were composites, I’m allowed to shred a magazine and make a composite image of something else. It’s fair use until I use those pieces to create a copyrighted image.