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A comment on Meta's Llama 3.1 can recall 42 percent of the first Harry Potter book. Parent comment

Re:Meta's Llama 3.1 can recall 42 percent of the first Harry... by ninetyninenine on Sunday June 15, 2025 @11:51PM (#44286474)
> that exists in the LLM, is that you can't make copies and distribute your brain to billions of people.

I can record myself reciting the full Harry Potter book then distribute it on YouTube.

Could do the exact same thing with an LLM. The potential for distribution exists in both cases. Why is one illegal and the other not?

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Re:Meta's Llama 3.1 can recall 42 percent of the first Harry... by davidcbc on Monday June 16, 2025 @12:23AM (#44286603)
> I can record myself reciting the full Harry Potter book then distribute it on YouTube

Not legally you can't. Both of your examples are copyright violations

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Re:Meta's Llama 3.1 can recall 42 percent of the first Harry... by briffid on Monday June 16, 2025 @01:24AM (#44286829)
Recording yourself is not a violation, only publishing on Youtube. Content generated with LLMs are not a violation. Publishing the content you generated might be.
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Re:Meta's Llama 3.1 can recall 42 percent of the first Harry... by davidcbc on Monday June 16, 2025 @08:55AM (#44289075)
Generating the content for the user is the distribution regardless of what the user does with it
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Re:Meta's Llama 3.1 can recall 42 percent of the first Harry... by Jaygles on Monday June 16, 2025 @01:05AM (#44286758)
> I can record myself reciting the full Harry Potter book then distribute it on YouTube.

At this point you've created an entirely new copy in an audio/visual digital format and took the steps to make it available to the masses. This would almost certainly cross the line into violating copyright laws.

> Could do the exact same thing with an LLM. The potential for distribution exists in both cases. Why is one illegal and the other not?

To my knowledge, the legality of LLMs are still being tested in the courts, like in the NYT vs Microsoft/OpenAI lawsuit. But your video copy and distribution on YouTube would be much more similar to how LLMs are being used than your initial example of reading and memorizing HP just by yourself.

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