[twoodfin]

How would you distinguish “just a mechanical derivation of training set data” from compiled binary software? The latter seems also to be a mechanical derivation from the source code, but inherits the same protections under copyright law.

[kmeisthax]

Usually binaries are compiled from your own source code. If I took leaked Windows NT kernel source and compiled it myself, I wouldn't be able to claim ownership over the binaries.

Likewise if I drew my own art and used it as sample data for a completely trained-from-scractch art generator, I would own the result. The key problem is that, because AI companies are not licensing their data, there isn't any creativity that they own for them to assert copyright over. Even if AI training itself is fair use, they still own nothing.

[taneq]

Do artists not own copyright on artwork which comprises other sources (eg. collage, sampled music)? It’d be hard to claim that eg. Daft Punk doesn’t own copyright on their music.

(Whether other artists can claim copyright over some recognisable sample is another question.)

[kmeisthax]

This is why there's the "thin copyright" doctrine in the US. It comes up often in music cases, since a lot of pop music is trying to do the same thing. You can take a bunch of uncopyrightable elements, mix them together in a creative way, and get copyright over that. But that's a very "thin" copyright since the creativity is less.

I don't think thin copyright would apply to AI model weights, since those are trained entirely by an automated process. Hyperparameters are selected primarily for functionality and not creative merit. And the actual model architectures themselves would be the subject of patents, not copyright; since they're ideas, not expressions of an idea.

Related note: have we seen someone try to patent-troll AI yet?

[nl]

It depends.

The Verve's Richard Ashcroft lost partial copyright and all royalties for "Bitter Sweet Symphony" because a sample from the Rolling Stones wasn't properly cleared: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitter_Sweet_Symphony

Men at Work lost copyright over their famous "Land Down Under" because it used a tune from "Kookaburra sits in the Old Gum Tree" as an important part of the chorus.

[rnd0]

>Do artists not own copyright on artwork which comprises other sources (eg. collage, sampled music)? It’d be hard to claim that eg. Daft Punk doesn’t own copyright on their music.

Agreed. By that logic, William S Burroughs wouldn't own his best novels: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique