this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Because this proves that the "AI", at some level, is storing the data of the Joker movie screenshot somewhere inside of its training set.
Likely because the "AI" was trained upon this image at some point. This has repercussions with regards to copyright law. It means the training set contains copyrighted data and the use of said training set could be argued as piracy.
Legal discussions on how to talk about generative-AI are only happening now, now that people can experiment with the technology. But its not like our laws have changed, copyright infringement is copyright infringement. If the training data is obviously copyright infringement, then the data must be retrained in a more appropriate manner.
I've had this discussion before, but that's not how copyright exceptions work.
Right or wrong (it hasn't been litigated yet), AI models are being claimed as fair use exceptions to the use of copyrighted material. Similar to other fair uses, the argument goes something like:
"The AI model is simply a digital representation of facts gleamed from the analysis of copyrighted works, and since factual data cannot be copyrighted (e.g. a description of the Mona Lisa vs the painting itself), the model itself is fair use"
I think it'll boil down to whether the models can be easily used as replacements to the works being claimed, and honestly I think that'll fail. That the models are quite good at reconstructing common expressions of copyrighted work is novel to the case law, though, and worthy of investigation.
But as someone who thinks ownership of expressions is bullshit anyway, I tend to think copyright is not the right way to go about penalizing or preventing the harm caused by the technology.
Copyright law is the right tool, but the companies are chasing the wrong side of the equation.
Training should not and I suspect will not be found to be infringement. If old news articles from the NYT can teach a model language in ways that help it review medical literature to come up with novel approaches to cure cancer, there's a whole host of features from public good to transformational use going on.
What they should be throwing resources at is policing usage not training. Make the case that OpenAI is liable for infringing generation. Ensure that there needs to be copyright checking on outputs. In many ways this feels like a repeat of IP criticisms around the time Google acquired YouTube which were solved with an IP tagging system.
Should Photoshop check your image for copyright infringement? Should Adobe be liable for copyright infringing or offensive images users of it's program create?
If it's contributing creatively to your work, yeah, totally.
If you ask Photoshop fill to add an italian plumber and you've been living under a rock for you life so you don't realize it's Mario, when you get sued by Nintendo for copyright infringement it'd be much better policy if it was Adobe on the hook for adding copyrighted material and not the end user.
A better analogy is: if you hired a graphic designer and they gave you copyrighted material, who is liable?
AI is not contributing creatively though, programs do not create.
I am speaking of Photoshop used as a non-AI tool as it has been used to commit copyright infringement for decades before Photoshop fill was a thing. Should it check if your image infringes on copyright?
The graphic designer. If you went ahead and redistributed it you would also be liable. Whatever program he used or it's developer wouldn't be liable.
You and I will have to agree to disagree on that Kool-aid, and it's that disagreement which is core to the model provider being liable for introducing copyright infringement.
Did photoshop create a portion of my image? Did adobe add a "generate the picture I asked for, for me, without my input beyond a typed prompt" as a feature?
Because if they did, 100% yeah, theyre liable.
They actually are not whether you use a prompt to generate the picture or a digitally paint it with a tablet.
The user would be the one committing copyright infringement.