cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/8121669
Japan determines copyright doesn’t apply to LLM/ML training data.
On a global scale, Japan’s move adds a twist to the regulation debate. Current discussions have focused on a “rogue nation” scenario where a less developed country might disregard a global framework to gain an advantage. But with Japan, we see a different dynamic. The world’s third-largest economy is saying it won’t hinder AI research and development. Plus, it’s prepared to leverage this new technology to compete directly with the West.
I am going to live in the sea.
www.biia.com/japan-goes-all-in-copyright-doesnt-apply-to-ai-training/
Nice, time to train one with all the Nintendo leaks and generate some Zelda art and a new Mario title!
train one with all the Nintendo leaks
This is fine
generate some Zelda art and a new Mario title
This is copyright infringement.
The ruling in japan (and as I predict also in other countries) is that the act of training a model (which is just a statistical estimator) is not copyrightable, so cannot be copyright infringement. This is already standard practice for everything else: You cannot copyright a mathematical function, regardless of how much data you use to fit to it (that is sensible: CERN has fit physics models to petabytes worth of data, that doesn’t mean they hold a copyright on laws of nature, they just hold the copyright on the data itself). However, if you generate something that is copyrighted, that item is still copyrighted: It doesn’t matter whether you used an AI image generator, photoshop, or a tattoo gun.
But you could ask it to generate something in the style of Zelda, without being Zelda.
And that would be completely legal, just like any random guy on deviantart can draw something in the style of e.g. Picasso without getting into trouble (unless of course they claim it was painted by picasso, but that should be obvious).
Nintendo would have coup the government if the decision made this scenario actually possible.
What’s stopping somebody from making an LLM that can reproduce media that was used in its training with close to 100% accuracy? If that happens, then we’ll have a copyright laundering service.
Reproducing copywrited works would be a problem. Consuming them is not.
In your example, a copyright case would be able to move forward and be tested in court. I would think it stands as good of a shot at prevailing in that example. It would be the same as a case against someone who wrote a script for a website to reproduce copyrighted work on command. The difference is this isn’t that. And if and when it does that, the ai can be tuned to prevent it from continuing to do it.
Hi chatgpt7, I like legend of Zelda tears of the second kingdom, please code a similar game but change the colour of the grass from light green to medium light green.
Again, that’s producing a copyrighted work. That would be illegal. That isn’t the same as inputting the code into the LLM to use as a reference for when someone asks for help coding movement mechanics for a 3rd person action game of their own imagination
If you make it reproduce copyrighted media, it is a problem.
As long as the stuff it generates doesn’t resemble any copyrighted works, even if it was trained on copyrighted works, I don’t see why that should be problem.
I don’t even think there’s a problem recreating it, you just can’t distribute it.
For personal use it’s fine.
Its not like Disney is suing everyone drawing micky mouse in their personal art workbook
What media is an LLM going to be able to reproduce that I can’t already reproduce with a copy paste?
That’s not the point. If you rip a dvd, you babe the movie, but you can’t sell DVDs with the movie, because it is copyrighted. After the “AI” has recreated it, the copyright is gone, so you can sell that version with impunity.
That’s not how copyright works though
Copyright infringement is about the act of reproduction, not the tools used to reproduce it. The court effectively said the LLM itself is not illegal just like a photocopier or CD/DVD burner is not illegal. It’s illegal if someone used an LLM, or photocopier, to make an unauthorized copy of a protected work though.
It will go to a judge and the judge will say that changing three pixels doesn’t make it derivative. Regardless of the method of transformation, the same fair use and parody laws apply.
The japanese artists will be so happy /s
Correct ruling.
Why can’t I pirate stuff without risking jail like AI companies?
If you read a book you can talk about it, quote it, draw characters from that book, write your own ending, etc.
Isn’t that kind of the same? Let’s say some day we have an AI with near human intelligence, why can’t the AI be trained on copyright works, just like humans, all our school books are copyrighted works?
Because you paid for that book?
So if AI companies pay for a book or music (like a consumer) it’s no problem? Because I don’t think this is about paying for content, it’s that content holders refuse to work with AI companies.
Unironically yes, if AI companies paid for training data everyone would be much happier.
I sincerely doubt that NOBODY is willing to sell data to them. It’s far more likely that they have not offered anyone a fair price yet, which makes sense because that would set a precedent.
Even then, if people don’t want to sell them their copyrighted work then tough. You can’t compel people to take customers they don’t want.
So if I go on a free website that hosts art (ArtStation, DeviantArt, etc.) and get training data that I could have legally accessed for free…
They’ve all already done that haha. You could argue that a human has only one life in which to remix that art but an AI is theoretically immortal, so it’s a different category of customer.
At any rate, it’s clear that AI should not have free access to copyrighted works, like news articles, academic papers, stock images, and various kinds of non deviantart art.
I’m pretty sure its technically copyright infringement to draw the characters (if they have a design in the book in images) or write fanfic, but no one cares. The only fan stuff that actually get taken down is nintendo fan games and in the past, videos on nintendo games without permission.
Why do you think you can’t? What do you think was illegal?
You can. Distributing copies is illegal, not downloading them. That’s why torrents are bad and streaming sites are fine. (Some exceptions might apply depending on your country).
From the “source” (the Japanese one, not the broken link at the bottom):
AIによる解析・学習についての現段階の日本の著作権法上の見解を確認、権利侵害の懸念も政府に訴えた一方、生成・出力段階での出力自体の著作権の扱いや元データの著作権の扱いが未確認ですので今後質疑等で確認する予定です。
生成系AIの活用、著作権者を守るための新たな規制が必要だ
It’s an analysis of the current copyright law in Japan. It does not mean that they won’t update the law eventually. What a terrible article.
Yeah i wish I had run the source article through Google Translate first.
Japan tech economy go brrrrr
Maybe that would finally get them to stop using fax machines.
