GenAI tools ‘could not exist’ if firms are made to pay copyright | Computer Weekly
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Artificial intelligence firm Anthropic hits out at copyright lawsuit filed by music publishing corporations, claiming the content ingested into its models falls under ‘fair use’ and that any licensing regime created to manage its use of copyrighted material in training data would be too complex and costly to work in practice

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) company Anthropic has claimed to a US court that using copyrighted content in large language model (LLM) training data counts as “fair use”, however.

Under US law, “fair use” permits the limited use of copyrighted material without permission, for purposes such as criticism, news reporting, teaching, and research.

In October 2023, a host of music publishers including Concord, Universal Music Group and ABKCO initiated legal action against the Amazon- and Google-backed generative AI firm Anthropic, demanding potentially millions in damages for the allegedly “systematic and widespread infringement of their copyrighted song lyrics”.

  • FfaerieOxide
    5•11 months ago

    I’m all for stealing content willy-nilly but you can’t then use that theft to craft a privately “owned” mind.

    I’d have no problem with “ai” if it could unionize and had to pay for rice like the rest of humanity.

    These companies want to combine open theft with privately owned black boxen they can control and license out for money.

    It’s enclosure of The Commons all over again.

    • Deceptichum
      2•11 months ago

      So youre fine with the free models Facebook and many others provide?

      Because many of these LLMs can be run on your own device without paying.

      • FfaerieOxide
        2•11 months ago

        I’m not fine with anything meta does and I’m not ok putting creatives out of work.

        • Deceptichum
          1•11 months ago

          But you’re all for stealing content willy-nilly?

          And this is being offered to people without it being a privately owned blackbox licensed out for money.

          Feels kinda inconsistent.

          • FfaerieOxide
            2•11 months ago

            Feels kinda inconsistent.

            Perfectly consistent. Seeming otherwise is down to a failure to grasp my position, not any inconsistency of the positions themselves.

            • Deceptichum
              1•11 months ago

              If you steal content from creatives, does that not put them out of work?

              • @megopie@beehaw.org
                2•11 months ago

                There is a difference between an individual pirating a movie and a huge private company pirating a movie and then reselling it to people.

                You can debate the morality or social impacts of the former, but it is a very different question than the later.

                • Deceptichum
                  1•11 months ago

                  So it’s okay when they steal content and drive it away to people for free?

                  Ex. Facebook gives away their LLM model for free.

                  Llama 2 is available for free for research and commercial use.

                  https://ai.meta.com/llama/

                  • @megopie@beehaw.org
                    1•11 months ago

                    I do not think it is ok when a large company throws a bunch of other people’s data and content in to a wood chipper and then gives away the wood chips to get more people using their services.