Microsoft, OpenAI sued for copyright infringement by nonfiction book authors in class action claim::The new copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI comes a week after The New York Times filed a similar complaint in New York.
Microsoft, OpenAI sued for copyright infringement by nonfiction book authors in class action claim::The new copyright infringement lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI comes a week after The New York Times filed a similar complaint in New York.
I disagree and I feel like you’re equally misrepresenting the issue if I must be as well. LLMs can do far more than simply write stories. They can write stories, but that is just one capability among numerous. Can it write stories in the style of GRRM? I suppose, but honestly doesn’t GRRM also borrow a lot of inspiration from other authors? Any writer claiming to be so unique that they aren’t borrowing from other writers is full of shit.
I’m not a lawyer or legal expert, I’m just giving a layman’s opinion on a topic. I hope Sam Altman and his merry band get nailed to the wall, I really do. It’s going to be a clusterfuck of endless legal battles for the foreseeable future, especially now that OpenAI isn’t even pretending to be nonprofit anymore.
This story is about a non-fiction work.
What is the purpose of a non-fiction work? It’s to give the reader further knowledge on a subject.
Why does an LLM manufacturer train their model on a non-fiction work? To be able to act as a substitute source of the knowledge.
End result is that
So, not only have they stolen their work, they’ve stolen their income and reputation.
If you’re using an LLM as any form of authoritative source-and literally any LLM specifically warns NOT to do that–then you’re going to have a bad time. No one is using them to learn in any serious capacity. Ideally, the AI should absolutely be citing its sources, and if someone is able to figure out how to do that reliably, they’ll be made quite rich, I’d imagine. In my opinion, the fiction writers have a stronger case than non-fiction (I believe the fiction writers’ class action against OpenAI in September is still ongoing).
For someone who claimed to not be a fan of OpenAI, you sure do know all the fan arguments against regulation for AI.
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I’m not here to argue the finer points, and in general I simply try to aim for the practical actions that lead to better circumstances. I agree with many of your points.
This lawsuit won’t fix anything but it will slow down the progress of OpenAI and their ability to loot culture and content for all it’s value. I see it as a foot in the door for less economically capable artists and such.
Lawsuits are not isolated incidents. The outcome of this will have far reaching impacts on the future of how people’s work is treated in regards to AI and training data.
There’s a big difference between borrowing inspiration and just using entire paragraphs of text or images wholesale. If GRRM uses entire paragraphs of JK Rowling with just the names changed and uses the same cover with a few different colors you have the same fight. LLM can do the first, but also does the second.
The “in the style of” is a different issue that’s being debated, as style isn’t protected by law. But apparently if you ask in the style of, the LLM can get lazy and produces parts of the (copyrighted) source material instead of something original.
Just as with the right query you could get a LLM to output a paragraph of copyrighted material, you can with the right query get Google to give you a link to copyrighted material. Does that make all search engines illegal?
Legally it’s very different. One is a link, the other content. It’s the same difference as pointing someone to the street where the dealers hang out or opening your coat and asking how many grams they want.
Websites that provide links to copyrighted material are illegal in the US. It’s why torrent sites are taken down and need to be hosted in countries with different copyright laws .
So Google can be used to pirate but that’s not it’s intention. It requires careful queries to get Google to show pirate links. Making a tool that could be used for unintentional copyright violation illegal makes all search engines illegal.
It could even make all programming languages illegal. I could use C to write a program to add two numbers or to crawl the web and return illegal movies.
Oh. Linking and even downloading torrents is legal in my place. Hosting and sharing is not. My bad.
From how I understand it is that the copyright holders want the LLM to do at least the same as Google is doing against torrents: it checks so no parts of the source material is in the output.