[stevehine]

This depends, how many times does it need to hear the song to build up a reasonably consistent internal reproduction, and are you paying per stream or buying the input data as CD Singles - or just putting the AI in a room with the radio on and waiting for it to take in the playlist a few times ?

[zelon88]

Let's assume it is in a room with a radio listening to music, and that the AI is "general purpose" meaning that it can also perform other functions. It is not the sole purpose of the AI to do this all day.

I see where you are coming from in trying to identify the source of the copyright. This would be important information if a human wanted to sue another human for re-producing copyright material.

However, does that apply here? Nobody hears a human humming a song and asks if they obtained that music legally. Should it be important to ask an AI that same question if the purpose of listening to the song is not to steal it?

[kube-system]

The standards applied are exactly the same regardless of what tools are used. It doesn't matter if you're talking about a dumb AI, a general purpose AI, or a Xerox machine.

If you want an exception to copyright, you're going to want to start looking at a section 107 (of the copyright act) exception: https://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#107

The reason someone walking down the street and humming a song is not a violation is because it very clearly meets all of the tests in section 107.

The biggest problem with feeding stuff through a black box like an LLM is it isn't easy for a human to determine how close the result is to the original. An LLM could act like a Xerox machine, and it won't tell you.

[zelon88]

I think this conversion has corrected some misgivings I had about the AI copyright argument. My takeaway is;

Possession copyright material is not inherently infringing on a copyright. Disseminating copyright material is unless you meet section 107. AI runs afoul of section 107 when it verbatim shares copyright material from its dataset without attribution.

[kube-system]

> AI runs afoul of section 107 when it verbatim shares copyright material from its dataset without attribution.

Technically, the AI doesn't run afoul. The person disseminating the copyrighted material does.

[nemomarx]

Not humming, but Don't we prevent singing songs sometimes? The birthday song was famously held up by ip law for some years right?