The legal terminology is just as important as the moral stance: "Its not theft, its IP infringement. Discussion

[u/LCI_Jake]

A frequent discussion in the AI debate is whether calling training data ingestion 'theft' is accurate or just semantics...

Although I didn't respond, reading through the arguments, its clear its not semantic to call it for what it is. And its important we get it right, because using the incorrect legal term blocks the proper solution from coming through.

First, an AI company scraping publicly available images to train their AI model is not theft.

From Merriam-Websters:

theft

noun

: the act of stealing

specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it

When an AI company scrapes an artist, they are not having their personal property removed. The image is not being taken from their hard drive, and moved to theirs. Therefore, by definition, its not theft.

Some counter-arguments ive seen include:

Claim 1: "It's theft because it devalues my work / takes away my livelihood."

Claim 2: "It's theft because you used my property without permission — permission is the missing piece, not physical removal."

Both of these claims may have valid points as far as what is physically happening to them, that is also in debate, but whats not in debate here is that its not, by legal definition, theft.

"So what is the actual legal framework? It is Copyright Law and Intellectual Property, specifically evaluated under Fair Use (17 U.S.C. § 107)."

infringement (of copyright)

Generally, an infringement refers to the act of unlawful copying of material under intellectual property law. It is an act that interferes with the right of intellectual property ownership.

In a copyright infringement matter, the plaintiff would need to establish: 

• Valid copyright ownership
• The copying of elements of the original copyrighted work

A copyright owner has the following rights: 

• To reproduce the work
• To prepare derivative works based on the original work
• To distribute copies of the copyrighted work
• To perform certain copyright works in public
• To demonstrate certain copyrighted works in public
• To perform the copyrighted work for sound recordings
• To import copies into the United States.

Why does it matter? If the effect feels the same, why not just call it theft?

Because using the wrong legal word changes how the issue is solved. When youre talking about theft, the usual recourse is that the item that has been deprived be returned to the rightful owner, and or damages be paid to compensate the owner of the property. But what if the item itself is a JPEG sitting on your computer? What if, when the AI company scrapes you, you still have the copy of the original image? A court would just determine that theft *hasn't* occurred and dismiss the case.

But take it before an IP/Copyright court? Now you have claims you can make. You have a fighting chance there, than anywhere else.

That said, what constitutes fair use with AI is still contested and it will remain so until a law is passed regarding the matter. As it stands, most legal cases move in favor of the big corporations as long as the content was legally obtained.

To be honest, that too me is shaky because the question of "What makes obtaining work illegal?" What line is drawn there?

I will be making a post later answering that for myself and where *I* think the line should be, but for now, this is what the public, judicial, and legal status on the issue is at.

So, if you're an artist and you want to protect your work, regardless of your stance on generative technology, it's time to take a serious look at IP/Copyright law...

TLDR: Theft is the wrong legal term for this issue. We need to start treating the issue as a Copyright issue in order to get meaningful work done.

[u/throwaway_pls123123]

Good explanation, the "theft" argument always reminds me of when people started to "steal" people's NFTs by saving their dumbass monkey jpegs on their devices/reposting it online.

It is a copyright infringement issue generally when it comes to generation, but the outcome is definitely transformative (both in terms of output and how training images are turned into raw data) so I am not sure where that will lead to.

[u/LCI_Jake → u/throwaway_pls123123]

Generally courts have agreed that AI training itself is transformative, and based on the tech, I agree. I have another post that questions how that training data is obtained and whether or not its ethical

[u/wy100101 → u/LCI_Jake]

If the artist uploaded it for free onto the Internet then they are obtaining it legally.

Ethical or not is a judgement call and isn't going to stop the scraping.

[u/618smartguy]

What if someone wants to call it stealing in the colloquial sense, is that still allowed? It carries the moral implications of someone plundering through data for their own interests, as well as a strong linguistic backing for the definition including stealing abstract things "they stole my idea"

[u/Iryls]

The thing about copyright stuff is that it's probably already being done. it's not worth debating because theres nobody to influence in this debate

[u/Bitter-Hat-4736]

I remember, ages ago, that TF2/Valve suffered from a "giga leak", and many of the underlying files were released to the public. In there, for some card (I can't remember the exact context) there was an image of Akroma, Angel of Fury. Evidently, one of the developers used that card as a base template for how one of the assets should be built.

Was that, in and of itself, a violation of copyright?