That's not how copyright works though. Whether you post an image publicly or not, it's covered by the standard copyright protection in most countries. It's not "without restriction" unless the author explicitly grants you such license.

There's a bit of nuance in this case, but in general, yes, you need a licence.

That is how copyright works. If you put something in public, people are allowed to look at it. And learn from it. They just can’t distribute copies of it.

People are allowed to learn from it, but as far as law exists now, AI's are not explicitly allowed to learn from it are they? As I understand it, a copyright has to be explicitly granted.

reference?

Laws don’t grant rights. They take them away. You generally are allowed to do something if it doesn’t violate a law. “Copyright” is not the right to copy, but rather a protection against other people copying and distributing your work.

There is no law that says you cannot train AI models on copyrighted data.

You don't train a model with data, as the verb "train" is used to describe something that humans and animals do (as per dictionary definition of the word). The other thing that you can do with data is copy or destroy it. Therefore, there is a law that says you cannot "train" (really, copy) data that is under copyright.

Train is an accurate word. Copy is not. Training is literally adjusting weights of network such that data that flows through it can look more like the original. But it doesn’t preserve the original.

Also, It is legal to make copies of copyrighted materials so long as you don’t distribute them.

Train is not accurate because this word applies to learning performed by humans or animals. An AI is neither. Taking data and putting it into any form of storage, ie weights in a model, is called copying. Producing an output out of the gathered data is then a step in distribution. Copyright laws ensure authors get protection against unwanted copy and distribution.

Also you do not have to preserve the original for copyright to apply: any extract is only allowed under well defined fair use rules. A GAN's purpose is definitely not parody, commentary, ...

> Train is not accurate because this word applies to learning performed by humans or animals. An AI is neither.

That is not a definition that people use, nor the legal system

> Taking data and putting it into any form of storage, ie weights in a model, is called copying. Producing an output out of the gathered data is then a step in distribution.

It isn’t though.

If I train on Batman and I produce Spider-Man, the Batman copyright holder cannot sue me. It would be dumb to suggest otherwise.

Very interesting to see that every single one of my posts on this have been downvoted, clearly the stakes are high.

This will see its day in court, and clearly indeed the meaning of the verb "train" will feature prominently in the debate.

I tend to side with reliance on dictionaries for the meaning of words, and in my understanding the courts also do.

If you load up only batman pictures on your model you will clearly only produce batman pictures. No one is being dumb here that does not want to be, I am sorry.

The courts have their own dictionaries though, so it depends on which court in which case you're talking about. Here's a list of definitions for how the (US) courts define the word software.

https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/software

> Very interesting to see that every single one of my posts on this have been downvoted, clearly the stakes are high.

Perhaps. Or, more likely I think, your argument is weak and doesn’t contribute meaningfully to the discussion.

Personally, I downvoted you do to my decades old rule of “downvote messages that complain about downvoting.” I don’t always downvote whiny comments, but I always downvote whiny comments about downvotes. (and I will be downvoting my own message as I am both pedantic and reliable).

> If you load up only batman pictures on your model you will clearly only produce batman pictures. No one is being dumb here that does not want to be, I am sorry

That’s not what I’m claiming though. I’m saying I take a model that has been trained on Batman and other things and I produce Spider-Man. If your point of view is to believed, the Batman copyright holder can sue me for producing a work that contains Spider-Man.

I can’t make copies or distribute or sell publicly available copyrighted works. But I can definite look at them and study them and make notes and sketch them, etc.

That’s definitely how copyright works.

I don’t think training on these has been tested, but I expect it will be allowed, otherwise how can a web browser receive, cache, and render a copyrighted photo? I think the closest is there were some lawsuits about google caching websites that contain copyrighted material. I assume they worked out in Google’s favor as google (and others) cache web sites even though they contain copyrighted material. The exception I remember is there are some specific rulings and laws governing how news is treated.

That's not the point I was disagreeing with. What you're actually allowed to do in terms of training is likely going to be soon refined by courts. I was just raising the point that posting those images online or not, with protection or without, doesn't change what you can legally do with them.

"If the image is available publicly, without restriction" — is irrelevant.

> If the artist doesn’t want people and algorithms to see the image

Why quickly skip past the most unjustifiable part? Because you're about to use a human metaphor (like "see") for an algorithm. My algorithm is "copy." So instead of driving, it's like selling a book with a sign on the book that says "copyright 2017, all rights reserved" and saying that people can't copy it. If you don't want people to copy it, don't write and distribute the book.

I actually believe this, but I don't know how somebody believes in one algo and not the other and remains consistent.

The algorithm used to train models like SD (that use the LAION dataset), do not actually make a copy though, in any reasonable sense of the word. [1]

LAION doesn't do the SD training themselves though. This just provide links with annotations.

[1] Exception: The Ephemeral copy that is made when actually downloading the image. This is permitted by EU law. AFAIK after the image has been analyzed for certain properties like "red" or "traffic light" or "bus" or "vertical line" .. .etc... it is then discarded.

An ephemeral copy is a copy! no matter how ephemeral, if you lift the pixels from system A to system B, you are copying.

In the USA there was a circuit split on this in 2020 at least [1]. In the European union this form of copying is explicitly excepted in general under Directive 2001/29/EC Article 5(1) see [2]. Specifically in Germany (where LAION is established) it is permitted under Section 44a of the UrhG [3] . One could also argue based on Section 44b of same.

[1] https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/53/5/notes/files/53... with thanks to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35713309

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX...

[3] https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_urhg/englisch_ur...

I am sorry but I have a very different reading of the mentioned EC Directive:

"""Article 5

Exceptions and limitations

1. Temporary acts of reproduction referred to in Article 2, which are transient or incidental [and] an integral and essential part of a technological process and whose sole purpose is to enable:

(a) a transmission in a network between third parties by an intermediary, or

(b) a lawful use of a work or other subject-matter to be made, and which have no independent economic significance, shall be exempted from the reproduction right provided for in Article 2. """

As upload to a GAN is not transmission, and the economic significance is pretty clear.

Then the German 44a is an exact copy of the EC directive, so this also applies I think.

I haven't heard the phrasing "Upload to a GAN" before. It also doesn't seem to be defined in the sources at hand. Can you provide a source and/or definition?

This is original research.

As the word "train" refers to applying the uniquely human capability of acquiring information, the word "upload" seems the most appropriate term fallback to use when referring to putting information into some AI system.

You're welcome!

Reference: open any dictionary and look up the word "train". Choo choo!

Note that "training" is a pretty common established term-of-art used in AI and ML for particular kinds of operations. Re-using the term "upload" on the spot would be misleading.

However, I get the impression you're feeling somewhat frustrated right this moment. Not a problem. Would you like to come back later and edit your post? If you do (and/or reply to this), I'll reply in more detail and provide sources where possible.

>As the word "train" refers to applying the uniquely human capability of acquiring information,

Dogs are trained to do certain things, are dogs humans?

Sorry, the dictionary definition for the verb "train" is that indeed it applies to humans, and animals. (and nothing else)

I think the argument is that it’s not the kind of copy that is copyright infringement.

In the sense that yes, the bits are copied from one register to another. But they aren’t stored permanently, nor are they distributed. So there’s no copyright violation.

Similarly my brain is making copies when I look at something. And routers on the internet make many copies sending the material to me. Etc etc.

If training on an image is copyright infringement for making copies, then so is viewing the image through glasses (image is transformed by the lens) or dragging the image from one monitor to another or caching the image in your browser and viewing it later from the cache rather than retrieving it again.