As the generative-AI crowd continues to feast on copyrighted material of all kinds, they are getting pushback in the form of lawsuits from artists, writers, and journalists. I discussed this recently with Dan and Eunice on the CSP Blog.
Open AI in particular seems to believe they have some kind of divine right to pursue whatever business they want, whether it is legal or not. Because reasons … including national security … and “meeting the needs of today’s citizens.” But probably just greed and hubris.
In a statement to the UK’s House of Lords, Open AI says this, and I assume they did so with a straight face, which would have been admirably difficult:
“Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression—including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents—it would be impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials,”
Open AI as reported by The Telegraph and others
To which I shrug and say, “Yeah, so?” Uh, try finding something better to do with your time?
You know, because I don’t have enough of my own money to free my time, it would be impossible to build up the CSP Blog to its full potential, helping untold dozens (!) across the world, without using other peoples’ money. So please give me a pass on theft. Thx!
Just think of all the large-language models that could be created by all the best hackers in the world if they could get their hands on Open AI’s models. It is impossible for those hackers to be the competitive–and helpful!–model creators they need to be without breaking into Open AI’s servers and downloading their complete files. So please give hackers a pass on breaking cyber-security laws. Thx!
Because I don’t have the time and talent to write all the best-selling novels and memoirs that I know I deserve to write, and that the world really needs to read (admit it!), it is impossible to deliver the books I want unless I can freely copy other writers’ words. So please give me a pass on plagiarism. Thx much!
Now my published work is pure gold, and there is more where that came from. But I can’t publish fast because of slow reviewers and their occasional rejections. It is impossible to publish as fast and as much as I want unless I use sock puppets and fake academic credentials to fool prestigious journals into sending me my own papers to review. So please just give me a pass on scientific fraud and enjoy the papers. Thx.
And the generative-AI companies not only scrape the internet for copyrighted material, but their black-box-trained networks produce copyrighted material. I guess the little guys have to play by the rules, but Open AI is too big to fail?
