Is it legal to use copyrighted works to train LLMs?

spinellis.gr

2 pointscratermoon3 comments

I think the real question is if it is legal to use unlicensed (not paid or pirated) copyrighted works to trains LLMs.

Because if they rule that is legal, I think the same principle should apply to humans as well.

Is it legal to teach kids and authors to write, by having them read lots of books?

Reading a lot is a well-known strategy to become better at writing. Thus, I argue that any reasonably skilled LLM that use the scraped text as input, but not produce verbatim copies, should not be considered as violating IP law.

That 'reasonably skilled LLM' is bearing a lot of the load. LLMs aren't 'skilled'. An LLM is a mathematical and computational construction, created through a mathematical transformation of input text and tokens. The people creating those models are using the text, not reading it, and no one is truly "reading" or "learning" from it.

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