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Parts of Debian dismiss AI-contributions policy

Parts of Debian dismiss AI-contributions policy

Posted May 13, 2024 13:40 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Parts of Debian dismiss AI-contributions policy by anselm
Parent article: Debian dismisses AI-contributions policy

That's looking at the other end of it - the question here is not whether an LLM's output can be copyrighted, but whether an LLM's output can infringe someone else's copyright. And the general stance elsewhere in copyright law is that the tooling used is irrelevant to whether or not a given tool output infringed copyright on that tool's inputs. It might, it might not, but that depends on the details of the inputs and outputs (and importantly, not on the tool in question).


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Parts of Debian dismiss AI-contributions policy

Posted May 13, 2024 14:55 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I think there might also be a problem here caused by "parts of the verb".

The output of an LLM cannot be copyrightED. That is, there is no original creative contribution BY THE LLM worthy of copyright.

But the output of an LLM can be COPYRIGHT. No "ed" on the end of it. The mere fact of feeding stuff through an LLM does not
automatically cancel any pre-existing copyright.

Again, we get back to the human analogy. There is no restriction on humans CONSUMING copyrighted works. European law explicitly extends that to LLMs CONSUMING copyrighted works.

And just as a human can regurgitate a copyrighted work in its entirety (Mozart is famous for doing this), so can an LLM. And both of these are blatant infringements if you don't have permission - although copyright was in its infancy when Mozart did it so I have no idea of the reality on the ground back then ...

Cheers,
Wol


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