This is why some of us have been ringing the alarm on these companies stealing data from users without consent. They know the data is valuable yet refuse to pay for the rights to use said data.
According to most sites TOS, when we write our posts we give them basically full access to do whatever they like including make derivative works. Here is the reddit one (not sure how Lemmy handles this):
When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
According to most sites TOS, when we write our posts we give them basically full access to do whatever they like including make derivative works.
2 points:
1 - I’m generally talking about companies extracting data from other websites, such as OpenAI scraping posts from reddit or other such postings. Companies that use their own collection of data are a very different thing.
2 - Terms of Service and Intellectual Property are not the same thing and a ToS is not guaranteed to be a fully legally binding document (the last part is the important part.) This is why services that have dealt with user created data that are used to licensing issues (think deviant art or other art hosting services) usually require the user to specify the license that they wish to distribute their content under (cc0, for example, would be fully permissible in this context.) This also means that most fan art is fair game as licensing that content is dubious at best, but raises the question around whether said content can be used to train an AI (again, intellectual property is generally different from a ToS).
It’s no different from how Github’s Copilot has to respect the license of your code regardless of whether you’ve agreed to the terms of service or not. Granted, this is legally disputable and I’m sure this will come up at some point with how these AI companies operate – This is a brave new world. Having said that, services like Twitter might want to give second thought of claiming ownership over every post on their site as it essentially means they are liable for the content that they host. This is something they’ve wanted to avoid in the past because it gives them good coverage for user submitted content that they think is harmful.
If I was a company, I wouldn’t want to be hinging my entire business on my terms of service being a legally binding document – they generally aren’t and can frequently be found to be unbinding. And, again, this is different from OpenAI as much of their data is based on data they’ve scraped from websites which they haven’t agreed to take data from (finders-keepers is generally not how ownership works and is more akin to piracy. I wouldn’t want to base a multinational business off of piracy.)
That’s easy to say, but when every company doing this is also lobbying congress to basically allow them to build a monopoly and eliminate all alternatives, the choice is use our service or nothing. Which basically applies to the entire internet.
Well firstly the article is paywalled but secondly the example that they gave in this short bit you can read looks like contact information that you put at the end of an email.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In reality the exceptions are way more widespread than you believe.
that’s hardly something they can be expected to detect or police.
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.
You don’t want to let people manipulate your tools outside your expectations. It could be abused to produce content that is damaging to your brand, and in the case of GPT, damaging in general. I imagine OpenAI really doesn’t want people figuring out how to weaponize the model for propaganda and/or deceit, or worse (I dunno, bomb instructions?)
It’s kind of odd that they could just take random information from the internet without asking and are now treating it like a trade secret.
This is why some of us have been ringing the alarm on these companies stealing data from users without consent. They know the data is valuable yet refuse to pay for the rights to use said data.
Yup. And instead, they make us pay them for it. 🤡
According to most sites TOS, when we write our posts we give them basically full access to do whatever they like including make derivative works. Here is the reddit one (not sure how Lemmy handles this):
2 points:
1 - I’m generally talking about companies extracting data from other websites, such as OpenAI scraping posts from reddit or other such postings. Companies that use their own collection of data are a very different thing.
2 - Terms of Service and Intellectual Property are not the same thing and a ToS is not guaranteed to be a fully legally binding document (the last part is the important part.) This is why services that have dealt with user created data that are used to licensing issues (think deviant art or other art hosting services) usually require the user to specify the license that they wish to distribute their content under (cc0, for example, would be fully permissible in this context.) This also means that most fan art is fair game as licensing that content is dubious at best, but raises the question around whether said content can be used to train an AI (again, intellectual property is generally different from a ToS).
It’s no different from how Github’s Copilot has to respect the license of your code regardless of whether you’ve agreed to the terms of service or not. Granted, this is legally disputable and I’m sure this will come up at some point with how these AI companies operate – This is a brave new world. Having said that, services like Twitter might want to give second thought of claiming ownership over every post on their site as it essentially means they are liable for the content that they host. This is something they’ve wanted to avoid in the past because it gives them good coverage for user submitted content that they think is harmful.
If I was a company, I wouldn’t want to be hinging my entire business on my terms of service being a legally binding document – they generally aren’t and can frequently be found to be unbinding. And, again, this is different from OpenAI as much of their data is based on data they’ve scraped from websites which they haven’t agreed to take data from (finders-keepers is generally not how ownership works and is more akin to piracy. I wouldn’t want to base a multinational business off of piracy.)
The compensation you get for your data is access to whatever app.
You’re more than welcome to simply not do this thing that billions of people also do not do.
This doesn’t come out of an app, they scraped the Internet.
That’s easy to say, but when every company doing this is also lobbying congress to basically allow them to build a monopoly and eliminate all alternatives, the choice is use our service or nothing. Which basically applies to the entire internet.
These LLM scrape our data whether or not we use their “app” or service.
Are you proposing that everyone should just not use the Internet at all?
What about the data posted about me online without my express consent?
I’m proposing that you received fair compensation for the value you provided the LLM
What? So everyone who uses the Internet uses LLM?
I’m not a ChatGPT customer or user, what fair compensation am I receiving?
0, which is your approximate contribution.
Keep licking the corporate boot.
Lol ok sure
There was personal information included in the data. Did no one actually read the article?
Tbf it’s behind a soft paywall
Well firstly the article is paywalled but secondly the example that they gave in this short bit you can read looks like contact information that you put at the end of an email.
That would still be personal information.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
In a lot of cases, they don’t have permission to not pass it along. Some of that training data was copyleft!
You don’t want to let people manipulate your tools outside your expectations. It could be abused to produce content that is damaging to your brand, and in the case of GPT, damaging in general. I imagine OpenAI really doesn’t want people figuring out how to weaponize the model for propaganda and/or deceit, or worse (I dunno, bomb instructions?)