A bipartisan group of senators introduced a new bill to make it easier to authenticate and detect artificial intelligence-generated content and protect journalists and artists from having their work gobbled up by AI models without their permission.
The Content Origin Protection and Integrity from Edited and Deepfaked Media Act (COPIED Act) would direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to create standards and guidelines that help prove the origin of content and detect synthetic content, like through watermarking. It also directs the agency to create security measures to prevent tampering and requires AI tools for creative or journalistic content to let users attach information about their origin and prohibit that information from being removed. Under the bill, such content also could not be used to train AI models.
Content owners, including broadcasters, artists, and newspapers, could sue companies they believe used their materials without permission or tampered with authentication markers. State attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission could also enforce the bill, which its backers say prohibits anyone from “removing, disabling, or tampering with content provenance information” outside of an exception for some security research purposes.
(A copy of the bill is in he article, here is the important part imo:
Prohibits the use of “covered content” (digital representations of copyrighted works) with content provenance to either train an AI- /algorithm-based system or create synthetic content without the express, informed consent and adherence to the terms of use of such content, including compensation)
This is essentially regulatory capture. The article is very lax on calling it what it is.
A few things to consider:
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Laws can’t be applied retroactively, this would essentially close the door behind Openai, Google and Microsoft. Openai with sora in conjunction with the big Hollywood companies will be the only ones able to do proper video generation.
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Individuals will not be getting paid, databrokers will.
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They can easily pay pennies to a third world artist to build them a dataset copying a style. Styles are not copyrightable.
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The open source scene is completely dead in the water and so is fine tuning for individuals.
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AI isn’t going away, all this does is force us and the economy into a subscription model.
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Companies like Disney, Getty and Adobe reap everything.
In a perfect world, this bill would be aiming to make all models copyleft instead but sadly, no one is lobbying for that in Washington and money talks.
No, you’re just an (Iceland word) ASSHOLE
- The open source scene is completely dead in the water and so is fine tuning for individuals.
Why do you think that? The existing data sets won’t be going anywhere. Fine tuning doesn’t require nearly the same amount of training images and it’s not infeasible to get them from individual artists.
Not that that actually matters to open source developers, though, as the developer obligations only apply if you’re making the product available for a commercial purpose, so they’re not relevant to developers of gratis solutions - and most libre developers are also gratis developers. If your platform is not commercial and doesn’t have at least 25 Million monthly active users, you don’t need to allow users to add content provenance information in the first place. If it’s not for a commercial purpose, you aren’t prohibited from training on content containing content provenance information, or from removing it and training on it.
I’ll be honest, I read it to fast and didn’t see the “for commercial use part”. I still think this is problematic because a lot of fine tuners and some companies putting out models either have a Patreon or offer their model for individual use but not to host on generating services without compensation (a good example of this is pony for fine tuners or codestal(I think) for general model providers). It also means any one building models can’t then commercialize models on their end while still offering it for free to the community, it puts them in a tough position. I don’t know how Metas llama could survive this or Google’s gemma. I’m also curious how this affects huggingface since I’m not sure if they are making it available like it says in the bill by hosting it.
It does put the bill in a better light though and I will edit my comment.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
A bipartisan group of senators introduced a new bill to make it easier to authenticate and detect artificial intelligence-generated content and protect journalists and artists from having their work gobbled up by AI models without their permission.
Content owners, including broadcasters, artists, and newspapers, could sue companies they believe used their materials without permission or tampered with authentication markers.
State attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission could also enforce the bill, which its backers say prohibits anyone from “removing, disabling, or tampering with content provenance information” outside of an exception for some security research purposes.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) led an effort to create an AI roadmap for the chamber, but made clear that new laws would be worked out in individual committees.
“The capacity of AI to produce stunningly accurate digital representations of performers poses a real and present threat to the economic and reputational well-being and self-determination of our members,” SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland said in a statement.
“We need a fully transparent and accountable supply chain for generative Artificial Intelligence and the content it creates in order to protect everyone’s basic right to control the use of their face, voice, and persona.”
The original article contains 384 words, the summary contains 203 words. Saved 47%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This sounds like a way to get media companies and tech companies to fight.
Unfortunately I expect that they will both somehow win and individuals will be worse off. This is the U-S-A god damn it.
For those who are saying just photoshop.
https://methodshop.com/photoshop-money/
Obviously you can just use other software but PS is the main choice for image editing. What they need to do is put legislation in place and it will make the biggest players implement this form of drm.
The main goal is cementing the position of the giants, creating a bureaucratic mote around them to keep small players economically unviable.
People keep saying that, all the while ignoring that this bill is granting rights to small time creators to decide if they want their works used for machine learning.
Yes, this gives a head start to companies that have been abusing the system while it was still allowed. But stopping that behaviour too late is still better than not stopping it at all.
You said nothing about creators getting screwed for untold centuries, only when big corporations were threatened slightly did you speak up.
Small creators aren’t competition or an alternative to big tech.
If the only game in town is still big tech. You will need an army of lawyer to get leverage on them.
I posted this in a thread, but Im gonna make it a parent comment for those who support this bill.
Consider youtube poop, Im serious. Every clip in them is sourced from preexisting audio and video, and mixed or distorted in a comedic format. You could make an AI to make youtube poops using those same clips and other “poops” as training data. What it outputs might be of lower quality (less funny), but in a technical sense it would be made in an identical fashion. And, to the chagrin of Disney, Nintendo, and Viacom, these are considered legally distinct entities; because I dont watch Frying Nemo in place of Finding Nemo. So why would it be any different when an AI makes it?
My best guess would be intent, which I think is an important component of fair use. The intent of youtube poop creators could be considered parody and while someone could use AI to create parody, the intent of creating the AI model itself is not parody (at least not for these massive AI models that most people use).
Transformation is in itself fair use is the thing. Ytp doesnt need to be parody or critique or anything else, because its fundamentally no longer the same product as whatever the source was as a direct result of editing
Still, the AI model itself is not transformative, it is merely incorporating that data into its training set.
But what it outputs IS transformative, which- of course- is the e primary use
If I include an image of mickey mouse (ripped straight from disney) in my application in a proprietary compression format, then the application decompresses that image and changes the hue (or whatever other kind of modification), then these are technically “transformations” but they’re not transformative.
The law being violated there is trademark, not copyright
No it isn’t. The image of mickey mouse was literally copied (hence copyright, literally right to copy). Regardless, that’s still IP law being violated so I don’t know how that helps your case.
How would this even work when you sometimes can just remove the watermark by photoshoping?
In the same way that the law doesn’t prevent you from murdering someone, but just makes it illegal to do so.
Wow so much freedom. You can’t even alter a picture that you own.
i think you can remove it if you own the copyright on it
How gracious of them.
?
I have ever right to remove a watermark from any image on my computer.
Not true however if you actually own the image then it’s unlikely to have a watermark
Is the photo of the image on my device? If so I own it. If you take a photo of it you own that photo as well.
I’m sure that’s how it works in your ideal world or imaginationland. But you do realise there’s like no legal basis for this in the real world, right? Just because you downloaded an Iron man torrent, does not mean you own part of the MCU.
Not true
Why not? I can tear out the copyright section of book I own, how is removing a watermark different?
Reproduction is the primary complaint, but if I don’t distribute it that’s invalid.
If you put something on the Internet you are giving up ownership of it. This is reality and companies taking advantage of this for AI have already proven this is true.
You are not going to be able to put the cat back in the bag. The whole concept of ownership over art, ideas, and our very culture was always ridiculous.
It is past time to do away with the joke of the legal framework we call IP law. It is merely a tool for monied interests to extract more obscene profit from our culture at this point.
There is only one way forward and that is sweeping privacy protections. No more data collection, no more targeted advertising, no more dark patterns. The problem is corporations are not going to let that happen without a fight.
“If you put something on the Internet you are giving up ownership of it.” There are plenty of internet culture outside Western that still respect ownership, people don’t just take random things on internet without permission. Western internet culture =/= entire internet.
Copyright law if done correctly can actually develop culture and innovation.
For example, having a law that forbids big company to patent essential important technology, while allowing small independent creator to protect their IP from big corpo churning out copycats (like a lot of company in China illegally printing merchandise with art from small creator).
Yeah in theory but in practice that isn’t happening. In theory the laws could be structured such that creatives are being paid fairly and distributors make some money and that the general public knows the stuff will be public domain in a relatively short period of time.
No one is doing it and they had hundreds of years to figure out how to do it. You are asking us to take it on faith and I personally will not.
There are plenty of internet culture outside Western that still respect ownership, people don’t just take random things on internet without permission. Western internet culture =/= entire internet.
Which cultures are you referring to?
Fakelandia it is on a continent that you probably haven’t heard of.
Incredibly well-put. IP is just land for the wannabe landlords of information and culture.
They are just attempting to squeeze the working class dry, take the last freedoms we have so we have to use their corporate products.
Anyone supporting this better be against right of repair and jail time for anyone discussing a sporting event without written permission
This is a brutally dystopian law. Forget the AI angle and turn on your brain.
Any information will get a label saying who owns it and what can be done with it. Tampering with these labels becomes a crime. This is the infrastructure for the complete control of the flow of all information.
Exactly, this isn’t about any sort of AI, this is the old playbook of trying to digitally track images, just with the current label slapped on. Regardless of your opinion on AI, this is a terrible way to solve this.
I don’t like AI but I hate intellectual property. And the people that want to restrict AI don’t seem to understand the implications that has. I am ok with copying as I think copyright is a load of bullocks. But they aren’t even reproducing the content verbatim are they? They’re ‘taking inspiration’ if you will, transforming it into something completely different. Seems like fair use to me. It’s just that people hate AI, and hate the companies behind it, and don’t get me wrong, rightfully so, but that shouldn’t get us all to stop thinking critically about intellectual property laws.
I’m the opposite, actually. I like generative AI. But as a creator who shares his work with the public for their (non-commercial) enjoyment, I am not okay with a billionaire industry training their models on my content without my permission, and then use those models as a money machine.
This law will ensure only giant tech company have this power. Hobbyists and home players will be prevented.
What are you basing that on?
Content owners, including broadcasters, artists, and newspapers, could sue companies they believe used their materials without permission or tampered with authentication markers.
Doesn’t say anything about the right just applying to giant tech companies, it specifically mentions artists as part of the protected content owners.
That’s like saying you are just as protected regardless which side of the mote you stand on.
It’s pretty clear the way things are shaping up is only the big tech elite will control AI and they will lord us over with it.
The worst thing that could happen with AI. It falling into the hands of the elites, is happening.
I respectfully disagree. I think small time AI (read: pretty much all the custom models on hugging face) will get a giant boost out of this, since they can get away with training on “custom” data sets - since they are too small to be held accountable.
However, those models will become worthless to enterprise level models, since they wouldn’t be able to account for the legality. In other words, once you make big bucks of of AI you’ll have to prove your models were sourced properly. But if you’re just creating a model for small time use, you can get away with a lot.
I am skeptical that this is how it will turn out. I don’t really believe there will be a path from 0$ to challenging big tech without a roadblock of lawyers shutting you down with no way out on the way.
I don’t think so either, but to me that is the purpose.
Somewhere between small time personal-use ML and commercial exploitation, there should be ethical sourcing of input data, rather than the current method of “scrape all you can find, fuck copyright” that OpenAI & co are getting away with.
Just because intellectual property laws currently can be exploited doesnt mean there is no place for it at all.
That’s an opinion you can have, but I can just as well hold mine, which is that restricting any form of copying is unnatural and harmful to society.
Do you believe noone should be able to charge money for their art?
That’s right. They can put their art up for sale, but if someone wants to take a free copy nothing should be able to stop them.
That effectively makes all art free. At best its donation based.
Yes, that would be best.
That would lead to most art being produced by people who are wealthy enough to afford to produce it for free, wouldn’t it?
What incentive would a working person have to work on becoming an artist? Its not like artists are decided at birth or something.
True but you people have had hundreds of years to fix the system and have not.
They’re ‘taking inspiration’ if you will, transforming it into something completely different.
That is not at all what takes place with A.I.
An A.I. doesn’t “learn” like a human does. It aggregates multiple chunks from multiple sources. It’s just really really tiny chunks so it’s hard to tell sometimes.
That’s why you can ask two AI’s to write a story based on the same prompt and some of their lines will be exactly the same. Because it’s not taking inspiration from, it’s literally copying bits and pieces of other works and it happens that they both chose that particular bit.
If you do that when writing a paper in university it’s called plagerism.
Get the fuck out of here with your “A.I. takes inspiration…” it copies nothing more. It doesn’t add anything new to the sum total of the creative zeitgeist because it’s just remixes of things that already exist.
it copies nothing more it’s just remixes of things that already exist.
So it does do more than copying? Because as you said - it remixes.
It sounds like the line you’re trying to draw is not only arbitrary, but you yourself can’t even stick with it for more than one sentence.
Everything new is some unique combination of things that already exist, the elements it draws from are called sources and influences, and rules according to which they’re remixed are called techniques.
Heck even re-arranging elements of just one thing is a unique and different thing, or is your favourite song and a remix of it literally the same? Or does the remix not have artistic value, even though someone out there probably likes the remix, but not the original?
I think your confusion stems from the fact you’re a top shelf, grade-A Moron.
You’re an organic, locally sourced and ethically produced idiot, and you need to learn how basic ML works, what “new” is, and glance at some basic epistemology and metaphysics before you lead us to ruin because you don’t even understand what “new” entails, before your reactionary rhetoric leads us all down straight to cyberpunk dystopias.
You can do the same thing with the Hardy Boys. You can find the same page word for word in different books. You can also do that with the Bible. The authors were plagiarizing each other.
It doesn’t add anything new to the sum total of the creative zeitgeist because it’s just remixes of things that already exist.
Do yourself a favor and never ever go into design of infrastructure equipment or eat at a Pizza Hut or get a drink from Starbucks or work for an American car company or be connected to Boeing.
Everyone has this super impressive view of human creativity and I am waiting to see any of it. As far as I can tell the less creative you are the more success you will have. But let me guess you ride a Segway, wear those shoes with toes, have gone through every recipe of Julia Childs, and compose novels that look like Finnegan’s Wake got into a car crash with EE Cummings and Gravity’s Rainbow.
Now leave me alone with I eat the same burger as everyone else and watch reruns of Family Guy in my house that looks like all the other ones on the street
Consider youtube poop, Im serious. Everyclip in them is sourced from preexisting audio and video, and mixed or distorted in a comedic format. You could make an AI to make youtube poops using those same clips and other “poops” as training data. What it outputs might be of lower quality, but in a technical sense it would be made in an identical fashion. And, to the chagrin of Disney, Nintendo, and Viacom, these are considered legally distinct entities; because I dont watch Frying Nemo in place of Finding Nemo. So why would it be any different when an AI makes it?
Doesn’t this infringe on fair use? e.g. if i’m making a parody of something and I mimic the original even by using a portion of the original’s text word for word.
Everyone is so obsessed with having a monopoly over everything, it’s not what is best for 8 billion people.
As if a law could prevent anything of that. They simply demand “Pigs Must Fly”, and don’t waste a thought on how utterly unrealistic this is.
As if a law could prevent anything of that.
Generating legal liability goes a long way towards curbing how businesses behave, particularly when they can be picked on by rival mega-firms.
But because we’ve made class action lawsuits increasingly difficult, particularly after Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, the idea that individual claimants can effectively prosecute a case against an interstate or international entity is increasingly farcical. You’re either going to need big state agencies (the EU seems increasingly invested in cracking down on American tech companies for anti-competitive practices) or rivalrous business interests (MPAA/RIAA going after Big Tech backed AI firms) to leverage this kind of liability. It’s still going to be open season on everyone using DeviantArt or Pinterest or whatever.
A bit late now, isn’t it?
All the big corporations have already trained most of their current ai, so all this does is put the up and comers at a disadvantage.
Seeing as laws can’t be applied retroactively, what would have been the alternative?
It could halt the progress of improving their models and stagnate the whole technology.
That being said, it only halts progress for American companies. Other countries will happily ignore this law and grow beyond our capabilities. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than the current situation.
Reminds me of Russia before WWI began. They realized they had fallen horribly behind the rest of the world in terms of military technology, so they called an arms limitation treaty conference where they pushed for basically every country in the world to agree to stop inventing any new weapons of any kind.
From what I understand the next rounds of ai are being trained on further refined versions of the same datasets and supplemented with synthetic data.
The damage to existing copyrighted content is already done.
Source: I’m a random internet user
It’s all still there. No damage was done.
Don’t see an issue with this. People who scrape copyrighted content should pay for it.
Closing the door behind the ones that already did it means only the current groups that have the data will make money of it.
Downvote all you want. If your entire business or personal model includes stealing content from other people, then you need to rethink that.
Openai exec: oh shit damn,. Damn. I gotta call my mom.
Stealing: depriving you of what you own
Copying: taking a picture of what you made.
Stealing is not copying. You still have whatever you started with.
“stealing” implies the owner does not have it anymore… It is large studio speak.
And I get what you are trying so say, I just think the copyright system is so broken that this shows it is in need of reform. Because if the qualm is with people doing immoral shit as a business model, there are long lists of corporations that will ask you to hold their beer.
And the fact that the training of the models already occurred on these materials means that the owners of the current models are probably training on generated datasets meaning that by the time this actually hits court, the datasets with original copyrighted materials will be obsolete.
Regarding obsolete models, that’s only partially true. There’s loads of content that are effectively “finished” and won’t be changing, and will grow obsolete at a fairly slow pace. Meaning they’ll be useful in the models once trained for years.
Obviously new technology and similar ideas/content that didn’t exist when the model was created won’t be there, but the amount that changes and or is new is relatively small each year compared to all the historical content.
No.
You’re just a fucking idiot. Big difference.
No, you are. You’ll be in a hell of your own making when you’re going to be paying a subscription to the corpo AIs just to remain employable.
Honestly reading this shit I know why structures of oppression like capitalism etc exist, it is because of dumb motherfuckers like you and I feel absolutely zero sympathy, you deserve all of it and more for simping for Musk, Altman et al.
“No, YOU ARE” 🤣
Comment breaks community standards.
Well that’s a well articulated reply.
I don’t understand why you would take this position. Because the small artists will never be able to avoid Beiing included in training sets, and if they are what are they going to do against a VC backed corpnlike OpenAI. All the while the big copyright “owners” will be excluded. Meaning this only cements the position of the mega corps.
Is it Copyright content?
This regulation (and similar being proposed in California) would not be applied retroactively.
Never mentioned any sort of retroactive measures.
Since no retroactive measures are mentioned, the companies that already scraped the web won’t be stopped from continuing to use the AI models already trained on that data, but anyone else would be stopped by the law.
It is like making it illegal to rob banks after someone already robbed all the banks and letting them keep all the money.
The law could have made it illegal for use of models trained on the copyrighted materials without permission instead of targeting the process for collecting it.
Yes it is perfectly appropriate for someone who burned a backup copy of a DVD they paid for to go to prison for ten years
This sounds exactly like existing copyright law and DRM.
It’s strengthening copyright laws by negating the transformative clause when dealing with AI
Hopefully the next step: force every platform that deals in user generated content to give users the choice to exploit that content for a fraction of the profit, or to exclude their content from processing.
It’s amazing how many people don’t realize that they themselves also hold copyright over their content, and that laws like these protect them as well.
