As an investor, I hope you’re ready to bankroll the inevitable legal battles. These are not going to be restricted to the big players. Eleuther was recently sued, and they’re a non profit.
The moment you try to market this, you need to be prepared for the lawsuit. I’m preparing for one, and all I did was assemble a dataset. This model is built off of work which most people (rightly or wrongly) believe is not yours to sell.
I’m still not sure how I feel about it. I was forced to confront the question a few days ago, and I’ve been in a holding pattern since then. I’m not so much concerned about the lawsuits as getting the big question right. Ethics has a funny way of sneaking up on you in the long run.
At the very least, be prepared for a lengthy, grizzly smear campaign. Two people wrote stories insinuating I somehow profited off of books3. Your crew will be profiting with intent.
One reason I’ve considered bowing out of ML is that I’d rather not be verbally spit on for the rest of eternity. It’s nice to have the support of colleagues, but unless you really care solely about money, you’ll be classified in the same bucket as Zuck: widely respected if successful by the people that matter, but never able to hold a normal relationship again. Most people probably prefer that tradeoff, but go into this with eyes wide open: you will be despised.
The way out is to help train a model on Creative Commons images. I don’t know if there’s enough data. And it’s certainly a bad idea to wait; your only chance of dominating this market is to iterate quickly, which means using existing models. But at this point, lawsuits are table stakes. You need to be prepared for when they happen, not if.
Also, join me in at least one sleepless night pondering the ethics of profiting off of this. Normally people only mention this as a social signal, not because they actually care. But if you sit down and think it through from first principles, the ethics — legality aside - is not at all clear. This also isn’t a case of a Snowmaker startup (https://x.com/snowmaker/status/1696026604030595497?s=61&t=jQ... he notes that this only works when you have the general population on your side. All of those examples are of startups violating the laws that people felt were dumb. Whereas I can tell you from firsthand trauma that copyright enthusiasts are religiously fanatical. Worse, they might be on the right side of the ethics question.
This was the first time in my life that a startup’s ethics gave me pause. Not just yours, but everyone who’s building creative tools off of these models. You’ll face a stiff headwind. Valve, for example, won’t approve any game containing any work generated by your tools. And everyone else is trying to build their own moat.
I’m not saying to consider giving up. I’m saying, really sit down and go through the mental exercise of deciding if this is a battle you want to fight for at least three years legally and five years socially. I’m happy to provide examples of the type of abuse you and your team will face, ranging from sticks and stones’ level insults to people directly calling for criminal liability (jail time). The latter is exceedingly unlikely, but being ostracized by the general public is not.
At the very least, you’ll need to have a solid answer prepared if you start hiring people and candidates ask for your stance. This comment is as much for your team as for you as an investor, since all of you will face these questions together.