I’ve generally been against giving AI works copyright, but this article presented what I felt were compelling arguments for why I might be wrong. What do you think?

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Again, it’s not a question of reproducing books in an LLM. The allegation is that the openAI developers downloaded books illegally to train their AI.

      You need to pay for your copy of a book. That’s true if you are a student teaching yourself to write, and it’s also true if you are an AI developer training an AI to write. In the latter case, you might also need to pay for a special license.

      Is it possible that the openAI developers can bring the receipts showing they paid for each and every book and/or license they needed to train their AI? Sure, it’s possible. If so, the lawyers who brought the suit would look pretty silly for not even bother to check.

      But openAI used a whole lot of books, which cost a whole lot of money. So I wouldn’t hold my breath.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 year ago

          Simple question:

          If you are college student, learning to write professionally, is it fair use to download copyrighted books from Z-Library in order to become a better writer? If you are a musician, is it fair use to download mp3s from The Pirate Bay in order to learn about musical styles? How about film students, can they torrent Disney movies as part of their education?

          I’m certain that every court in the US would rule that this is not fair use. It’s not fair use even if pirated content ultimately teaches a student how to create original, groundbreaking works of writing, music, and film.

          Simply being a student does not give someone free pass to pirate content. The same is true of training an AI, and there are already reports that pirated material is in the openAI training set.

          If openAI could claim fair use, then almost by definition The Pirate Bay could claim fair use too.

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              So you believe that if you download an mp3 and claim you are “analyzing” it, then you can’t be liable for IP infringement?

              Wow, I wonder why the Napster defendants never thought of that. They could have saved tens of thousands of dollars.