In a statement of written evidence to the UK House of Lords, OpenAI stated that creating AI tools without using copyrighted material is \u201cimpossible.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
This comes amid an intensifying debate surrounding copyright\u2019s interaction with AI, with authors, writers, and media outlets like the New York Times lodging lawsuits against OpenAI, Microsoft, Stability AI, Anthropic, Google, and Midjourney, to name but a few.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and image generators like Midjourney, which recently hit the headlines for creating a <\/span>database of 16,000 artists<\/span><\/a> for model training purposes, rely on extensive copyrighted data for their training.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, copyright data forms the mainstay of AI training material because it\u2019s abundant, covers a broad spectrum of human creativity, and is easily retrieved from the internet.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n AI companies argue this data is \u2018fair use\u2019 for their model training purposes, but many others disagree.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In response to the House of Lords communications and digital select committee, OpenAI recently emphasized their need for copyrighted material for training LLMs like GPT-4.<\/span><\/p>\n OpenAI stated, “Because copyright today covers virtually every sort of human expression \u2013 including blogposts, photographs, forum posts, scraps of software code, and government documents \u2013 it would be impossible to train today\u2019s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.”<\/span><\/p>\n The company further argued that restricting training materials to public domain sources would result in poor AI systems.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n “Limiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment, but would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today\u2019s citizens,” OpenAI added.<\/span><\/p>\n You can read the entire <\/span>written evidence submission here<\/span><\/a>, which also touches on the future trajectory of AI, catastrophic risks, to which OpenAI advertises their Frontier Model Forum and Preparedness team, and regulation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Reactions to these statements have not exactly been sympathetic.<\/p>\n Dr. Gary Marcus, for example, a prominent voice in the industry, said this essentially self-labels AI models as a monetization device for stolen copyright work.<\/p>\n Indeed, it seems like this is almost a Freudian slip on OpenAI’s part, admitting that their business model is unworkable without manipulating the law.<\/p>\n There’s a palpable sense of injustice with so few in the upper echelons of Silicon Valley benefitting from the work of so many.<\/p>\n OpenAI’s statement also asserts that they understand ‘the needs’ of today’s ‘citizens,’ exposing a widening disconnect between big tech’s view of generative AI as a humanitarian, even philanthropic project and people’s fears it’s stealing their data and displacing their skills.<\/p>\n Dr. Marcus commented, “[AI companies]…should go back to the drawing board\u2014and figure out how to build software that doesn\u2019t have a plagiarism problem\u2014rather than fleecing artists, writers, and other content providers.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now we know why Sam Altman went around the world last summer meeting world leaders: his company won\u2019t make it big unless they can convince governments to give them one of the biggest handouts in history. https:\/\/t.co\/Pcc8FchG1a<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Gary Marcus (@GaryMarcus) January 8, 2024<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThe public reacts<\/h2>\n
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