Re: D&D and ChatGPT
By: hollowone to All on Tue Apr 25 2023 05:54:32
If that could be proven, then I smell serious lawsuit soon.
I saw some cool ChatGPT transcripts around generating interactive fiction.
I think that could be a lot of fun, especially if it were being
generated on the fly.
Regarding lawsuits, here is an interesting post on AI vs copyright:
AI Drake just set an impossible legal trap for Google
By Nilay Patel / @reckless
Apr 19, 2023, 11:11 AM PDT|
YouTube copyright takedown
The AI Drake track that mysteriously went viral over the weekend is
the start of a problem that will upend Google in one way or
another--and it's really not clear which way it will go.
Here's the basics: there's a new track called "Heart on My Sleeve" by
a TikTok user called @ghostwriter877 with AI-generated vocals that
sound like Drake and The Weeknd. The song mysteriously blew up out of
nowhere over the weekend, which, well, is fishy for various reasons.
After the song went viral on TikTok, a full version was released on
music streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify, and on
YouTube. This prompted Drake and The Weeknd's label Universal Music
Group to issue a sternly-worded statement about the dangers of AI,
which specifically says that using generative AI infringes its
copyrights. Here's that statement, from UMG senior vice president of communications James Murtagh-Hopkins:
UMG's success has been, in part, due to embracing new technology
and putting it to work for our artists–as we have been doing with
our own innovation around AI for some time already. With that said,
however, the training of generative AI using our artists' music
(which represents both a breach of our agreements and a violation
of copyright law) as well as the availability of infringing content
created with generative AI on DSPs, begs the question as to which
side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be
on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on
the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due
compensation.
These instances demonstrate why platforms have a fundamental legal
and ethical responsibility to prevent the use of their services in
ways that harm artists. We're encouraged by the engagement of our
platform partners on these issues–as they recognize they need to be
part of the solution.
What happened next is a bit mysterious. The track came down from
streamers like Apple Music and Spotify which are in tight control of
their libraries and can pull tracks for any reason, but it remained
available on YouTube and TikTok, which are user-generated content
platforms with established DMCA takedown processes. I am told by a
single source familiar with the situation that UMG didn't actually
issue takedowns to the music streamers, and the streaming services so
far haven't said anything to the industry trade publications. Neither
has Drake or The Weeknd. It's weird – it does seem like
Ghostwriter977 pulled the track themselves to create hype, especially
while the song remained on YouTube and TikTok.
But then TikTok and YouTube also pulled the track. And YouTube, in
particular, pulled it with a statement that it was removed due to a
copyright notice from UMG. And this is where it gets fascinatingly
weedsy and probably existentially difficult for Google: to issue a
copyright takedown to YouTube, you need to have... a copyright on
something. Since "Heart on my Sleeve" is an original song, UMG
doesn't own it--it's not a copy of any song in the label's catalog.
So what did UMG claim? I have been told that the label considers the
Metro Boomin producer tag at the start of the song to be an
unauthorized sample, and that the DMCA takedown notice was issued
specifically about that sample and that sample alone. It is not clear
if that tag is actually a sample or itself AI-generated, but YouTube,
for its part, doesn't seem to want to push the discussion much
further.
"We removed the video after receiving a valid copyright notification
for a sample included in the video," is what YouTube spokesperson
Jack Malon says about the situation. "Whether or not the video was
generated using artificial intelligence does not impact our legal responsibility to provide a pathway for rightsholders to remove
content that allegedly infringes their copyrighted expression."
UMG has followed up by issuing individual URL-by-URL takedowns to
YouTube as copies of the song pop up, all based on the Metro Boomin
tag--I am told by another music industry source that the company
can't really use YouTube's automated ContentID system because, again,
it doesn't own the song and can't claim it for that system to begin
matching it. (Oddly, Ghostwriter977 reuploaded the track to their
YouTube page after the first takedown, and it's... still there.
Again, there's a lot of fishy stuff going on here.)
If Ghostwriter977 uploads "Heart on my Sleeve" without that Metro
Boomin tag, they will kick off a copyright war that pits the future
of Google against the future of YouTube
Got all that? Okay, now here's the problem: if Ghostwriter977 simply
uploads "Heart on my Sleeve" without that Metro Boomin tag, they will
kick off a copyright war that pits the future of Google against the
future of YouTube in a potentially zero-sum way. Google will either
have to kneecap all of its generative AI projects, including Bard and
the future of search, or piss off major YouTube partners like
Universal Music, Drake, and The Weeknd. Let's walk through it.
The first legal problem with using AI to make a song with vocals that
sound like they're from Drake is that the final product isn't a copy
of anything. Copyright law is very much based on the idea of making
copies--a sample is a copy, as is an interpolation of a melody. Music
copyright in particular has been getting aggressively expansive in
the streaming age, but it's still all based on copies of actual
songs. Fake Drake isn't a copy of any song in the Drake catalog, so
there's just no dead-ahead copyright claim to make. There's no copy.
Instead, UMG and Getty Images and publishers around the world are
claiming that collecting all the training data for the AI is
copyright infringement: that ingesting Drake's entire catalog, or
every Getty photo, or the contents of every Wall Street Journal
article (or whatever) to train an AI to make more photos or Drake
songs or news articles is unauthorized copying. That would make the
fake Drake songs created by that AI unauthorized "derivative works,"
and, phew, we're still squarely in the realm of copyright law that
everyone understands. (Or, well, pretends to understand.)
The problem is that Google, Microsoft, StabilityAI, and every other
AI company are all claiming that those training copies are fair
use--and by "fair" they do not mean "fair as determined by an
argument in an internet comments section," but "fair" as in "fair as
determined by a court on a case-by-case application of 17 United
States Code §107 which lays out a four-factor test for fair use that
is as contentious and unpredictable as anything in American political
life."
I asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about this when I talked to him
about the new ChatGPT-powered Bing, and he wasn't shy about it.
"Look, at the end of the day, search is about fair use," he said. "In
other places, again, it'll have to be really thought through as to
what is the fair use. And then sometimes, I think there'll be some
legal cases that will also have to create precedent. "
That's because there is no actual precedent for saying that scraping
data to train an AI is fair use; all of these companies are relying
on ancient internet law cases that allowed search engines and social
media platforms to exist in the first place. It's messy, and it feels
like all of those decisions are up for grabs in what promises to be a
decade of litigation.
So now imagine that you are Google, which on the one hand operates
YouTube, and on the other hand is racing to build generative AI
products like Bard, which is... trained by scraping tons of data from
the internet under a permissive interpretation of fair use that will
definitely get challenged in a wave of lawsuits. AI Drake comes
along, and Universal Music Group, one of the largest labels in the
world, releases a strongly worded statement about generative AI and
how its streaming partners need to respect its copyrights and
artists. What do you do?
* If Google agrees with Universal that AI-generated music is an
impermissible derivative work based on the unauthorized copying of
training data, and that YouTube should pull down songs that labels
flag for sounding like their artists, it undercuts its own fair use
argument for Bard and every other generative AI product it
makes--it undercuts the future of the company itself.
* If Google disagrees with Universal and says AI-generated music
should stay up because merely training an AI with existing works is
fair use, it protects its own AI efforts and the future of the
company, but probably triggers a bunch of future lawsuits from
Universal and potentially other labels, and certainly risks losing
access to Universal's music on YouTube, which puts YouTube at risk.
I asked Google's Malon about this dilemma, and he said "it's not up
to YouTube to determine who 'owns the rights' to content. This is
between the parties involved, and is why we give copyright holders
tools to make copyright claims and uploaders tools to dispute claims
they believe are made incorrectly. Matters that cannot be resolved
through our dispute process may ultimately need to be decided by a
court."
YouTube only continues to exist because of a delicate dance that
keeps rightsholders happy, but the future of Google is a bet on an
expansive interpretation of copyright law
That's the idea, but copyright claims on YouTube were messy and
contentious before the AI explosion, and now there's basically no way
for Google to avoid some major litigation here.
YouTube only continues to exist because of a delicate dance that
keeps rightsholders happy and the music industry paid, but the future
of Google itself is a bet on an expansive interpretation of copyright
law that every creative industry from music to movies to news hates
and will fight to the death. Because it is death: generative AI tools
promise to completely upend the market for almost all commodity
creative work, and these companies are not required to sit back and
let it happen.
The difference here is that the last time this sort of thing
happened, Google and YouTube were disruptive upstarts with killer
products and little to lose, and they accepted the litigation from
Viacom and everyone else as the cost of winning. Now, they're...
well, YouTube is literally a cable company. And navigating the thorny
world of content partnerships while chasing after AI startups who are
much freer to break things will force Google to make almost
impossible choices at every turn.
From: <
https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/19/23689879/ ai-drake-song-google-youtube-fair-use>
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