I've recently noticed this opinion seems unpopular, at least on Lemmy.
There is nothing wrong with downloading public data and doing statistical analysis on it, which is pretty much what these ML models do. They are not redistributing other peoples' works (well, sometimes they do, unintentionally, and safeguards to prevent this are usually built-in). The training data is generally much, much larger than the model sizes, so it is generally not possible for the models to reconstruct random specific works. They are not creating derivative works, in the legal sense, because they do not copy and modify the original works; they generate "new" content based on probabilities.
My opinion on the subject is pretty much in agreement with this document from the EFF: https://www.eff.org/document/eff-two-pager-ai
I understand the hate for companies using data you would reasonably expect would be private. I understand hate for purposely over-fitting the model on data to reproduce people's "likeness." I understand the hate for AI generated shit (because it is shit). I really don't understand where all this hate for using public data for building a "statistical" model to "learn" general patterns is coming from.
I can also understand the anxiety people may feel, if they believe all the AI hype, that it will eliminate jobs. I don't think AI is going to be able to directly replace people any time soon. It will probably improve productivity (with stuff like background-removers, better autocomplete, etc), which might eliminate some jobs, but that's really just a problem with capitalism, and productivity increases are generally considered good.
This is not an opinion. You have made a statement of fact. And you are wrong.
At law, something being publicly available does not mean it is allowed to be used for any purpose. Copyright law still applies. In most countries, making something publicly available does not cause all copyrights to be disclaimed on it. You are still not permitted to, for example, repost it elsewhere without the copyright holder's permission, or, as some courts have ruled, use it to train an AI that then creates derivative works. Derivative works are not permitted without the copyright holder's permission. Courts have ruled that this could mean everything an AI generates is a derivative work of everything in its training data and, therefore, copyright infringement.
They have indeed made a statement of fact. But to the best of my knowledge it's not one that's got any definite controlling precedent in law.
That's the thing. It's not clear that an LLM does "repost it elsewhere". As the OP said, the model itself is basically just a mathematical construct that can't really be turned back into the original work, which is possibly a sign that it's not a derivative work, but a transformative one, which is much more likely to be given Fair Use protection. Though Fair Use is always a question mark and you never really know if a use is Fair without going to court.
You could be right here. Or OP could. As far as I'm concerned anyone claiming to know either way is talking out of their arse.
Just because something is transformative doesn't mean that it's fair use. There's three other factors, including the nature of the work you copied, the amount of the copyrighted work taken for the use, and the effect on the market. There's no way in hell I believe that anyone can plausibly say with a straight face "I'm taking literally all of the creative works you've ever produced and using them to create a product designed to directly compete with you and put you out of business, and this qualifies as a fair use" and I would be shocked if any judge in any court heard that argument without laughing the poor lawyer making it out of the court.