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”.

  • Stillhart@lemm.ee
    361·
    11 months ago

    It doesn’t matter what business we’re talking about. If you can’t afford to pay the costs associated with running it, it’s not a viable business. It’s pretty fucking simple math.

    And no, we’re not talking about “to big to fail” business (that SHOULD be allowed to fail, IMHO) we’re talking about AI, that thing they keep trying to shove down our throats and that we keep saying we don’t want or need.

    • intensely_human@lemm.ee
      10·
      11 months ago

      Why are people publishing so much content online if they aren’t cool with people downloading it? Like, the web is an open platform. The content is there for the taking.

      Until one of these AIs just starts selling other people’s work as its own, and no I don’t mean derivative work I mean the copyrighted material, nobody is breaking the rules here.

      I read content online without paying for a license. I should only have to obtain a license for material I’m publishing, not material I read.

      • zaphod@lemmy.caEnglish
        61·
        11 months ago

        Until one of these AIs just starts selling other people’s work as its own, and no I don’t mean derivative work I mean the copyrighted material, nobody is breaking the rules here.

        Except of course that’s not how copyright law works in general.

        Of course the questions are 1) is training a model fair use and 2) are the resulting outputs derivative works. That’s for the courts to decide.

        But in general, just because I publish content on my website, does not give anyone else license or permission to republish that content or create derivative works, whether for free or for profit, unless I explicitly license that content accordingly.

        That’s why things like Creative Commons exists.

        But surely you already knew that.

        • blindsight@beehaw.org
          1·
          11 months ago

          Right, but I think it’s going to be a tough legal argument that using a text to adjust database weighting links between word associations is copying or distributing any part of that work. Assuming courts understand the math/algorithms.

    • Moira_Mayhem@beehaw.org
      4·
      11 months ago

      I don’t know if you noticed this but some really big companies with high stock valuations are only existing because investors poured tons of capital into them to subsidize the service.

      Uber could not do taxis cheaper than existing if they didn’t have years of free cash to artificially lower prices.

      We are in the beginning of late state capitalism, profitable companies go under due to private capital firms and absolute ponzi frauds get their faces on time magazine.

      Enjoy the collapse.

      • Stillhart@lemm.ee
        1·
        11 months ago

        I don’t know if you noticed this but some really big companies with high stock valuations are only existing because investors poured tons of capital into them to subsidize the service.

        Exactly, they PAID MONEY to make it work. No they don’t make the money back and depend on outside capital, but they are still paying their employees (not enough) and suppliers, etc.

        • Moira_Mayhem@beehaw.org
          1·
          11 months ago

          Yes, we are in late stage capitalism where the market eats itself.

          Why do you think we have seen so much large scale fraud in the last 15 years?