Microsoft AI Under Fire for Allegedly Consuming 200,000 Pirated Books — Authors Fight Back
Microsoft AI Under Fire for Allegedly Consuming 200,000 Pirated Books — Authors Fight Back
Microsoft's AI faces a lawsuit from authors claiming its Megatron model used 200,000 pirated books for training. This is the latest in a series of copyright battles.
Microsoft faces accusations from a collective of authors who claim the tech giant developed an artificial intelligence model using around 200,000 unlawfully copied books. This marks the latest development in the ongoing legal dispute over copyrighted material involving creators and technology firms.
Authors, including Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, and Daniel Okrent, have brought forward claims that Microsoft taught its Megatron AI to generate human-like responses by utilising pirated digital copies of their books.
Torrent sites should rebrand to AI training hubs.
@Blue_Morpho @throws_lemy Well yeah, this is simply genius.
Takedowns will become a thing of the past!! :ablobcatgoogly:
"Consuming 200,000 Pirate Books"
I don't see any problem with that, although I was not aware there were so many books in that niche category. Arrrr!
On a serous note, the issue of copyrighted works and training is something that should have been (was) anticipated and had laws in place to control it. We're at the point now of asking why there aren't locks on the barn door and the horses have been gone, escaping last week. And if you thought things like music copyright (i.e. where notes sound very similar, like the Vanilla Ice/Queen/Bowie lawsuit), proving that something's come out of a black box that happens to match some parts of something you wrote, but are different is even more vague. It's a case of everyone knows what they did, but legally how can you show it?
But again the big problem is the usual with tech, the legal side of things is so much slower and behind, so many that get harmed aren't going to get a fair settlement. Plus they're going against huge corporations, so good luck there too.
Didn't the same thing happen with authors and google 10+ years ago? That wasn't ever resolved, was it? Normally, I'd look it up, but I have a feeling I'd be spending time to be disappointed by the answer.