Microsoft CEO of AI: Online content is 'freeware' for models
www.theregister.com
Unless you've got a lawyer, that is
  • t3rmit3@beehaw.org
    63·
    6 months ago

    There is leaked Windows source code online… Is that also freeware for me to train an OS-building model on?

  • 4dpuzzle@beehaw.orgEnglish
    13·
    6 months ago

    The sort of mental gymnastics and cognitive dissonance that these subhuman c-suite employ to justify stealing everyone else’s data while demonizing sharing of their data, is just infuriating. If these scumbags were incarcerated for a day each for every time they showed this hypocrisy, they would all rot in the jails for their entire lifetime, perhaps more.

    • renard_roux@beehaw.org
      1·
      6 months ago

      Lifetime jail + lifetime jail for X generations of offspring, depending on severity?

      Or instead of jailing children at birth, maybe just confiscating X yachts, depending on severity.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldBEnglish
    6·
    6 months ago

    🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:

    Click here to see the summary

    Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, said this week that machine-learning companies can scrape most content published online and use it to train neural networks because it’s essentially “freeware.”

    Shortly afterwards the Center for Investigative Reporting sued OpenAI and its largest investor Microsoft “for using the nonprofit news organization’s content without permission or offering compensation.”

    Also, in 2022, several unidentified developers sued OpenAI and GitHub based on claims that the organizations used publicly posted programming code to train generative models in violation of software licensing terms

    Most people posting content online as individuals will have compromised their rights in some way by accepting the Terms of Service agreements offered by major social media platforms.

    The fact that OpenAI and others making AI models are striking content deals with major publishers shows that a strong brand, deep pockets, and a legal team can bring large technology operations to the negotiating table.

    People will stop making work available online, they predict, if it just gets used to power AI models that reduce the marginal cost of content creation to zero and deprive creators of the possibility of any reward.

    Saved 74% of original text.

  • jarfil@beehaw.org
    2·
    6 months ago

    Using the term “freeware” is silly, but consider this:

    Is the act of reading/watching something, equivalent to making a copy? Freedom of thought is an agreement much older than the 1990s, it has nothing to do with copyright, and all to do with secrecy. If something is made public, then it isn’t secret, so obviously anyone can read/watch it, be it with a wetware neural network, or an AI neural network. Making an exact copy is either plagiarism, or copyright infringement… but abstracting a style, then applying it to some other data, is “inspiration”.

    Imagine a website with a licensing disclaimer like “you are allowed to read the content, but not to comprehend or express any thoughts based on it”. Nonsense, right?