I'm not whining in this case, just pointing out "they gave it out for free" is completely false, at the very least for the GNU types. It was always meant to come with plenty of strings attached, and when those strings were dodged new strings were added (GPL3, AGPL).
If I had a photographic memory and I used it to replicate parts of GPLed software verbatim while erasing the license, I could not excuse it in court that I simply "learned from" the examples.
Some companies outright bar their employees from reading GPLed code because they see it as too high of a liability. But if a computer does it, then suddenly it is a-ok. Apparently according to the courts too.
If you're going to allow copyright laundering, at least allow it for both humans and computers. It's only fair.
We spread free software for multiple purposes, one of them being the free software ethos. People using that for training proprietary models is antithetical to such ideas.
It's also an interesting double standard, wherein if I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action, but when a large company clearly violates the license terms of free software, you give them a pass.
> The difference is that people who write open source code or release art publicly on the internet from their comfortable air conditioned offices voluntarily chose to give away their work for free
That is not nearly the extent of AI training data (e.g. OpenAI training its image models on Studio Ghibli art). But if by "gave their work away for free" you mean "allowed others to make [proprietary] derivative works", then that is in many cases simply not true (e.g. GPL software, or artists who publish work protected by copyright).
It's not free. There is a license attached. One you are supposed to follow and not doing so is against the law.
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I'm not whining in this case, just pointing out "they gave it out for free" is completely false, at the very least for the GNU types. It was always meant to come with plenty of strings attached, and when those strings were dodged new strings were added (GPL3, AGPL).
If I had a photographic memory and I used it to replicate parts of GPLed software verbatim while erasing the license, I could not excuse it in court that I simply "learned from" the examples.
Some companies outright bar their employees from reading GPLed code because they see it as too high of a liability. But if a computer does it, then suddenly it is a-ok. Apparently according to the courts too.
If you're going to allow copyright laundering, at least allow it for both humans and computers. It's only fair.
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We spread free software for multiple purposes, one of them being the free software ethos. People using that for training proprietary models is antithetical to such ideas.
It's also an interesting double standard, wherein if I were to steal OpenAI's models, no AI worshippers would have any issue condemning my action, but when a large company clearly violates the license terms of free software, you give them a pass.
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> The difference is that people who write open source code or release art publicly on the internet from their comfortable air conditioned offices voluntarily chose to give away their work for free
That is not nearly the extent of AI training data (e.g. OpenAI training its image models on Studio Ghibli art). But if by "gave their work away for free" you mean "allowed others to make [proprietary] derivative works", then that is in many cases simply not true (e.g. GPL software, or artists who publish work protected by copyright).
What? Over 183K books were pirated by these big tech companies to train their models. They knew what they were doing was wrong.
Perhaps you should Google the definition of metaphor before commenting.