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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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They do not have permission to pass it on. It might be an issue if they didn't stop it.
As if they had permission to take it in the first place
It's a hugely grey area but as far as the courts are concerned if it's on the internet and it's not behind a paywall or password then it's publicly available information.
I could write a script to just visit loads of web pages and scrape the text contents of those pages and drop them into a big huge text file essentially that's exactly what they did.
If those web pages are human accessible for free then I can't see how they could be considered anything other than public domain information in which case you explicitly don't need to ask the permission.
I don't think that's the case. A photographer can post pictures on their website for free, but that doesn't make it legal for anyone else to slap the pictures on t-shirts and sell them.
Because that becomes distribution.
Which is the crux of this issue: using the data for training was probably legal use under copyright, but if the AI begins to share training data that is distribution, and that is definitely illegal.
It wasn't. It is commercial use to train and sell a programm with it and that is regulated differently than private use. The data is still 1 to 1 part of the product. In fact this instance of chatGPT being able to output training data means the data is still there unchanged.
If training AI with text is made legally independent of the license of said text then by the same logic programming code and text can no longer be protected by it at all.
First of all no: Training a model and selling the model is demonstrably equivalent to re-distributing the raw data.
Secondly: What about all the copyleft work in there? That work is specifically licensed such that nobody can use the work to create a non-free derivative, which is exactly what openAI has done.
Copyleft is the only valid argument here. Everything else falls under fair use as it is a derivative work.
If I scrape a bunch of data, put it in a database, and then make that database queryable only using obscure, arcane prompts: Is that a derivative work permitted under fair use?
Because if you can get chatgpt to spit out raw training data with the right prompt, it can essentially be used as a database of copyrighted stuff that is very difficult to query.
No because that would be distribution, as I've already stated.
If it doesn't spit out raw data and instead changes it somehow, it's a derivative work.
I can spell out the distinction for you twice more if you still don't get it.
Exactly! Then you agree that because chatgpt can be coerced into spitting out raw, unmodified data, distributing it is a violation of copyright. Glad we're on the same page.
You should look up the term "rhetorical question" by the way.
So you understand the distinction between distribution and derivative work? Great!
Er... no. That's not in the slightest bit true.
That was the whole reason that Reddit debacle whole happened they wanted to stop the scraping of content so that they could sell it. Before that they were just taking it for free and there was no problem
You can go to your closest library and do the exact same thing: copy all books by hand, or whatever. Of you then use that information to make a product you sell, then you're in trouble, as the books are still protected by copyright, even when they're publicly available.
Only if I tried to sell the works as my own I've taken plenty of copies of notes for my own personal use
And open ai is not personal use?
Google provides sample text for every site that comes up in the results, and they put ads on the page too. If it's publicly available we are well past at least a portion being fair use.
A portion is legally protected. ALL data, not so much. Court cases on going.
But Google displays the relevant portion! How could it do that without scraping and internally seeing all of it?
They almost certainly had, as it was downloaded from the net. Some stuff gets published accidentally or illegally, but that's hardly something they can be expected to detect or police.
That's not how it works. That's not how anything works.
How do you think it works?
Why not?
I couldn't, but I also do not have an "awesomely powerful AI on the verge of destroying humanity". Seems it would be simple for them. I mean, if I had such a thing, I would be expected to use it to solve such simple problems.
Neither do they lol
Unless you're arguing that any use of data from the Internet counts as "fair use" and therefore is excepted under copyright law, what you're saying makes no sense.
There may be an argument that some of the ways ChatGPT uses data could count as fair use. OTOH, when it's spitting out its training material 1:1, that makes it pretty clear it's copyright infringement.
In reality, what you're saying makes no sense.
Making something available on the internet means giving permission to download it. Exceptions may be if it happens accidentally or if the uploader does not have the necessary permissions. If users had to make sure that everything was correct, they'd basically have to get a written permission via the post before visiting any page.
Fair use is a defense against copyright infringement under US law. Using the web is rarely fair use because there is no copyright infringement. When training data is regurgitated, that is mostly fair use. If the data is public domain/out of copyright, then it is not.
Literally and explicitly untrue.
Sure, you can put something up and explicitly deny permission to visit the link. But courts rarely back up that kind of silliness.
In reality the exceptions are way more widespread than you believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Fraud_and_Abuse_Act#Criticism
Oh. I see. The attempts to extract training data from ChatGPT may be criminal under the CFAA. Not a happy thought.
I did say "making available" to exclude "hacking".
The point I'm illustrating is that plenty of things reasonable people would assume are fine the law can call hacking.
No permission is given to download it. In particular, no permission is given to copy it.
Yes, but it's often unclear what constitutes fair use.
What are you even talking about.
You have no idea what fair use is, just admit it.
In a lot of cases, they don't have permission to not pass it along. Some of that training data was copyleft!