Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Arnt 897 days ago
Could you please explain (without metaphors!) why the publishers who publish 20-page summaries of books do so legally, while GPT's reuse into its content violates copyright?
3 comments

A 20-page summary of a book is a substantially different creation. They likely don't even have entire paragraphs reproduced, maybe only a few quotes. Those summaries also have deeper introspection on the overall work along with potentially critique about the work. It is a different creation even though related to another.

Exactly reproducing most of an article is vastly different from a short summary. ChatGPT was exactly reproducing large amounts or entire articles. If ChatGPT was only writing short summaries of articles or critiques about them this case would be radically different. But in the end, ChatGPT is exactly reproducing copyrighted works.

Because those are summaries.

The NYT found substantial portions of exact copies of their content being reproduced when you give ChatGPT the right prompts.

This is still apples to oranges, but I'll bite.

A summarized book can still entice a potential reader to purchase it. It's a form of advertising.

Chewing up content and spinning it without any citations does not provide the original owners any form of publicity.