I always say this when this comes up because I really believe it's the right solution - any generative AI built with unlicensed and/or public works should then be free for the public to use.

If they want to charge for access that's fine but they should have to go about securing legal rights first. If that's impossible, they should worry about profits some other way like maybe add-ons such as internet connected AI and so forth.

I doubt it. It would likely kill any non Giant tech backed AI companies though

Microsoft has armies of lawyers and cash to pay. It would make life a lot harder, but they’d survive

If OpenAI owns a Copyright on the output of their LLMs, then I side with the NYT.

If the output is public domain--that is you or I could use it commercially without OpenAI's permission--then I side with OpenAI.

Sort of like how a spell checker works. The dictionary is Copyrighted, the spell check software is Copyrighted, but using it on your document doesn't grant the spell check vendor any Copyright over it.

I think this strikes a reasonable balance between creators' IP rights, AI companies' interest in expansion, and the public interest in having these tools at our disposal. So, in my scheme, either creators get a royalty, or the LLM company doesn't get to Copyright the outputs. I could even see different AI companies going down different paths and offering different kinds of service based on that distinction.

The NYT has a market cap of about $8B. MSFT has a market cap of about $3T. MSFT could take a controlling interest in the Times for the change it finds in the couch cushions. I’m betting a good chunk of the c-suites of the interested parties have higher personal net worths than the NYT has in market cap.

I have mixed feelings about how generative models are built and used. I have mixed feelings about IP laws. I think there needs to be a distinction between academic research and for-profit applications. I don’t know how to bring the laws into alignment on all of those things.

But I do know that the interested parties who are developing generative models for commercial use, in addition to making their models available for academics and non-commercial applications, could well afford to properly compensate companies for their training data.

Oh no, how terrible. What ever will we do without Shenanigans Inc. 🙄

YES! AI is cool I guess, but the massive AI circlejerk is so irritating though.

If OpenAI can infringe upon all the copyrighted material on the net then the internet can use everything of theirs all for free too.

This would bring up the cost of entry for making a model and nothing more. OpenAI will buy the data if they have too and so will google. The money will only go to the owners of the New York Times and its shareholders, none of the journalists who will be let go in the coming years will see a dime.

We must keep the entry into the AI game as low as possible or the only two players will be Microsoft and Google. And as our economy becomes increasingly AI driven, this will cement them owning it.

Pragmatism or slavery, these are the two options.

inshallah

Is there a possible way that both the NYT and OpenAI could lose?

Oh no. Anyways.

The problem with copyright is that everything is automatically copyrighted. The copyright logo is purely symbolic, at this point. Both sides are technically right, even though the courts have ruled that anything an AI outputs is actually in the public domain.

Don’t threaten me with a good time!

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Late last year, the New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, alleging that the companies are stealing its copyrighted content to train their large language models and then profiting off of it.

Meanwhile, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and Law held a hearing in which news executives implored lawmakers to force AI companies to pay publishers for using their content.

In its rebuttal, OpenAI said that regurgitation is a “rare bug” that the company is “working to drive to zero.” It also claims that the Times “intentionally manipulated prompts” to get this to happen and “cherry-picked their examples from many attempts.”

A growing list of authors and entertainers have been filing lawsuits since ChatGPT made its splashy debut in the fall of 2022, accusing these companies of copying their works in order to train their models.

Developers have sued OpenAI and Microsoft for allegedly stealing software code, while Getty Images is embroiled in a lawsuit against Stability AI, the makers of image-generating model Stable Diffusion, over its copyrighted photos.

In that 2013 decision, Judge Chin said its technology “advances the progress of the arts and sciences, while maintaining respectful consideration for the rights of authors and other creative individuals, and without adversely impacting the rights of copyright holders.” And a 2023 economics study of the effects of Google Books found that “digitization significantly boosts the demand for physical versions” and “allows independent publishers to introduce new editions for existing books, further increasing sales.” So consider that another point in favor of giving tech platforms room to innovate.

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