[HN Gopher] Following lawsuit, rep admits "AI" George Carlin was...
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Following lawsuit, rep admits "AI" George Carlin was human-written
Author : rntn
Score : 55 points
Date : 2024-01-28 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| jpalawaga wrote:
| The "no, actually, a human did it" is an interesting defense. How
| are you to prove one way or another short of finding system logs
| of an AI outputting the material?
|
| Further, does copyright law really care what generate the
| material? Either the material is copyrighted or it isn't, and
| people aren't signing licenses about reproducing what they
| hear/interpret/etc (which, imo, would be a flagrant
| misapplication of copyright law).
|
| That being said, I haven't researched how likeness laws extend
| beyond the person's life.
| PeterisP wrote:
| Copyright law cares about what generated the material, because
| it protects certain rights of the creator of the work, and if
| you can't point to a human creator whose rights were violated
| (a machine or program has no legal rights) then no one has any
| exclusive rights to that work, it's outside the scope of
| copyright law, it's effectively "uncopyrightable". These rights
| can be transferred from the author to a corporation, for
| example, in employment contract or law; but a corporation can't
| simply claim them if they never existed in the first place.
| ertian wrote:
| This is kind of an interesting twist on a Turing test. If you
| can't tell by examining the work whether it was created by a
| human or an AI, then how can we say that a human is creative
| an an AI is not?
| cmcaleer wrote:
| As it relates to computers though this seems incredibly messy
| and a bad interpretation. Is my python script copyrighted,
| but the bytecode (generated by a computer) not? How do
| compiled programs have any copyright protection? Am I only
| violating a computer's copyright (so no copyright) if I crack
| DRM on a generated executable file[1]? Does the DMCA anti-
| circumvention protection only apply to hand-applied
| protection? When is a computer doing too much of the work?
| What about a Blender render? I think it would take me a hot
| minute to do those raytracing computations by hand. Do I only
| get the copyright to the output if I do that?
|
| The most straightforward way to look at it is that computers
| and their programs are a tool, and their output as used by a
| person or person on behalf of a company. I think this current
| definition as I (NAL) understand it is unworkable and
| probably won't last long-term.
|
| [1] Say for the sake of argument that there's no images or
| models or things that are obviously copyrighted, it's just a
| CLI calculator
| PeterisP wrote:
| The bytecode is not a novel creative work and does not have
| a separate copyright, this affects, for example, copyright
| terms (not that they are already relevant for code with the
| terms being so long) - the effective copyright date is when
| you wrote the source code, not when it was compiled; and of
| course the authorship - it does not matter who owns the
| machine or who initiated the compiling, only the writing of
| the original source code. But it is protected effectively
| as a "copy in a different format" of the original work -
| just as for a book, perhaps the author originally wrote as
| a manuscript with a quill on parchment or on a computer,
| and for the physical printed book it matters when and how
| the book was originally written (first 'fixed on a durable
| medium'), not what machines or tools were used in
| typesetting and printing the copy that you have - and the
| printed copy is still protected as a copy of that original
| creative work fixed in a manuscript.
|
| In essence, as far as copyright law is concerned, the
| bytecode isn't _generated_ by a tool, it 's _transformed_
| by a tool.
| latency-guy2 wrote:
| > How are you to prove one way or another short of finding
| system logs of an AI outputting the material?
|
| I imagine the defense is the same as any other defense of "no,
| it was not me, it was someone other than me", you must
| establish your presence or activity at the time, or if they're
| the defendant, establish enough doubt to the prosecution's
| position.
|
| Not a lawyer at all though.
| dotancohen wrote:
| But saying "the tool did it" is ridiculous. AI is still a
| tool, not a separate responsible entity.
|
| "I did not shoot the sheriff, Your Honour. The Colt did it."
| Lerc wrote:
| In this case I don't think it is terribly pertinent whether or
| not the content was AI generated. The issue here is someone is
| trying to capitalize on the legacy of George Carlin. Admitting
| that it is human-written does not change that aspect.
|
| I'm not an expert in the entire IP landscape, but I suspect this
| might not be a copyright issue at all. The problem is the brand
| (how George would hate that phrasing) is being appropriated. If
| you paid an artist to draw a picture of Keanu eating donuts for
| an advertising campaign there would be the same issue.
|
| If anything this ends up being a partial defense of AI, given
| that the issues raised are neither specific to AI nor require
| additional laws to seek redress. It is hard to determine how much
| of the article text
|
| >That training would, by definition, involve making "unauthorized
| copies" of "Carlin's original, copyrighted routines"
|
| ...is a quote from the lawsuit. It is certainly not clear in a
| moral or legal sense whether training constitutes making an
| unauthorized copy. That is the big issue to be decided. Having an
| opinion and declaring it does not make it true. People are doing
| that on both sides already.
|
| It should be noted that in addition to the legal issues,
| comedians have their own culture which is separate from the legal
| definitions of acceptable behaviour. The tolerance for reusing
| ideas is considerably lower within that community. Many things
| that are perfectly legal might render you a pariah to that
| community.
| notfed wrote:
| > The issue here is someone is trying to capitalize on the
| legacy of George Carlin.
|
| Personally, if someone creates an entertaining video that
| successfully captures the spirit of George Carlin, or any
| deceased speaker or artist, that sounds awesome. I'm all for
| it. I'd also love to have another Led Zeppelin album.
|
| How would you suggest someone creates this ethically?
| quatrefoil wrote:
| That was the whole gimmick here, though. They pitched it as
| "AI-generated George Carlin". They used his likeness for the
| thumbnail. They faked his voice.
|
| Nothing is stopping you from writing a novel in the style of
| Harry Potter, but if you put "Harry Potter" in the title and
| use the same typeface, you're probably gonna get a call from
| a lawyer, because you're clearly trying to capitalize on
| existing IP instead of letting your work stand on its own
| merits. Is that wrong?
|
| There's plenty of people bashing the concept of intellectual
| property here because Disney or whatever, but most artists
| aren't fat cats, and copyright protects their livelihoods
| without forcing them to rely on state sponsorship or private
| patronage - both of which are pretty problematic for artistic
| expression.
| Spivak wrote:
| > Is that wrong?
|
| Honestly I don't think so. This is one of the things that's
| always bothered me about copyright, that for the entire
| history of humanity storytelling has been a place where
| practitioners build on one another and add their own takes
| and ideas. Stories are _shared_ and become part of people
| 's cultural and personal identities and I don't think they
| should be able to be owned to the degree they are today.
| _Copying_ your Phantom Menace DVD I think is totally fine
| to be illegal but making your own take on it, making art
| based on it, or telling other stories the same universe I
| think should be allowed.
|
| I would require compulsory licensing and percentage fee
| remittance for "covers" or "remixes" of someone else's
| work. Like if you remade Phantom Menace, made Muppets
| Phantom Menace or novelized it. But what's called fanfic
| today should be able to be published above board.
| DanHulton wrote:
| Sure, but you're not giving enough attention to the fact
| that this is all happening against the backdrop of
| capitalism. It's really NICE when stories can be just
| freely shared and remixed and built from, and we're all
| richer for that, culturally, sure.
|
| But artists and authors and comedians have to earn a
| living! If we want their output to be free, we can't
| expect them to also have to pay all for their inputs and,
| you know, keep making art!
|
| If we judge art to have value under capitalism, there
| NEEDS to be a way of protecting that value for those who
| create it. Alternatively, we could explore alternatives
| to this whole capitalism thing, but you can't have your
| cake and eat it, too.
| rchaud wrote:
| > How would you suggest someone creates this ethically?
|
| Step 1: Ask for permission.
|
| Example: the hologram of 2pac at Coachella 2012. It was
| pitched to the rapper's estate, they reviewed the proposal
| and approved.
| notfed wrote:
| Ask permission from whom? George Carlin has been dead for
| 15 years.
|
| From the copyright inheritors? Personally, not a fan of
| copyright inheritance, so I'll pass, unless I'm legally
| obligated. But I think the law says parody is fair use,
| does it not? I guess we'll find out with this lawsuit.
| potatolicious wrote:
| > _" It is certainly not clear in a moral or legal sense
| whether training constitutes making an unauthorized copy."_
|
| Another complicating factor here is to what extent the
| mainstream definition of "training" even applies to things like
| LLMs.
|
| The mismatch between what "training" typically means vs. what
| it means very specifically in a ML context is the source of
| many problems in this discussion.
|
| We have for example heard many arguments that a human listening
| to every Beatles album, and then writing a new song based
| heavily in the style of the Beatles, is very clearly legal. But
| _it 's not clear_ that the ML model "learns" or "trains" in any
| way that is analogous to the human mind.
|
| Another problem that I think we're not really contending with
| is to what extent LLMs generalize and to what extent they
| _memorize_. The more memorization that occurs the more
| compelling the argument will be that this is to some extent
| copyright-violating.
|
| It certainly doesn't help the generalization argument that many
| LLMs can be compelled fairly easily to reproduce parts of their
| training data verbatim.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > In this case I don't think it is terribly pertinent whether
| or not the content was AI generated. The issue here is someone
| is trying to capitalize on the legacy of George Carlin.
| Admitting that it is human-written does not change that aspect.
|
| > It is hard to determine how much of the article text ...is a
| quote from the lawsuit. It is certainly not clear in a moral or
| legal sense whether training constitutes making an unauthorized
| copy. That is the big issue to be decided. Having an opinion
| and declaring it does not make it true. People are doing that
| on both sides already.
|
| The article is paraphrasing one of the three claims asserted in
| the complaint filed by George Carlin's estate (https://embed.do
| cumentcloud.org/documents/24377438-govuscour...):
|
| > Without authorization from Plaintiffs, or any right under
| law, Defendants have unlawfully used Plaintiffs' copyrighted
| works for building and training a dataset for purposes of
| generating an output intended to mimic Plaintiffs' copyrighted
| work (i.e., Carlin's stand-up comedy).
|
| So regardless of whether the court will agree with this (I
| don't think the details of how training of AI models works in
| relation to copyright law have been settled in case law yet),
| it is in fact highly pertinent to the lawsuit because there
| will be no copyright claim if an AI was not trained on Carlin's
| work.
|
| That would still leave the two other claims though (violation
| of rights of publicity and deprivation of rights of publicity).
| askonomm wrote:
| I saw that video on YouTube, and I thought it was also written in
| the description of the video that it was human written, and even
| human voiced, but then made sound like Carlin with AI.
| unsane wrote:
| Yeah, at the time it was pretty widely known that this was the
| case (I don't recall whether it was in the description
| specifically). There's no revelation or admission that suddenly
| occurred this week.
| JieJie wrote:
| I guess I figured it was written by Kultgen with the help from
| ChatGPT? It would have been a noteworthy feat for a built-from-
| scratch-by-training-on-MADtv-episodes foundation model was
| capable of generating the Carlin video at the click of a button.
| That's still obvious to the average person, isn't it? Maybe not?
| (And is that officially the world we live in now?)
|
| Anyhoo. Still fair use, and even more so. A joke doesn't have to
| rise to a certain level of hilarity to deserve 1st A. protection.
|
| Even when, _especially_ when, the joke is on us.^0
|
| 0: https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126773469/onion-supreme-
| cour...
| drewcoo wrote:
| Great. Can we all just Mencia this Chad Kultgen dude and be done
| with it?
| WrockBro wrote:
| > Anticipating potential free speech defenses, the lawsuit argues
| that the special "has no comedic or creative value absent its
| self-proclaimed connection with George Carlin" and that it
| doesn't "satirize him as a performer or offer an independent
| critique of society."
|
| How is commenting on current events not "an independent critique
| of society"?
| labrador wrote:
| George Carlin always credited his older brother Patrick for being
| the genius of the family, so if I were them I would have
| presented "George Carlin's Genius Brother For the First Time!" or
| something like that, but of course that would be wrong and
| disrespectful as well. Maybe more legally defensible.
|
| https://variety.com/2022/film/news/patrick-carlin-dead-90-ge...
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