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.