YouTube Says OpenAI Training Sora With Its Videos Would Break Rules

The use of YouTube videos to train OpenAI's text-to-video generator would be an infraction of the platform's terms of service, YouTube Chief Executive Officer Neal Mohan said. Bloomberg: In his first public remarks on the topic, Mohan said he had no firsthand knowledge of whether OpenAI had, in fact, used YouTube videos to refine its artificial intelligence-powered video creation tool, called Sora. But if that were the case, it would be a "clear violation" of YouTube's terms of use, he said.

"From a creator's perspective, when a creator uploads their hard work to our platform, they have certain expectations," Mohan said Thursday. "One of those expectations is that the terms of service is going to be abided by. It does not allow for things like transcripts or video bits to be downloaded, and that is a clear violation of our terms of service. Those are the rules of the road in terms of content on our platform."

And?

[Baloo Uriza]

If you don't do something about it, Google, then you're just showing your ass on this. If you're gonna fight PISS (plagiarised information synthesis systems), make em explain why it's OK to violate copyright to a judge.

Re:

[Travelsonic]

explain why it's OK to violate copyright to a judge.

To be fair, it'd be an allegation of infringement if they go that route - am I misunderstanding it though in thinking it's more like YT is talking about a breach of contract angle?

Re:

[systemd-anonymousd]

B-b-b-ut they're rules!

Re: And?

[anonymouscoward52236]

No downloading? A crafty lawyer could say if you don't allow downloading the video, nobody could ever see it.

“Would be”?

[hdyoung]

Wrong tense there, pal.

I’ve got news for ya, youtube. They’ve trained chatgpt on ALL the youtube videos.

In reality, youtube already knows this and it’s just grandstanding for the media. It’s not like youtube’s parent company has allowed a single byte of available data to slip through it’s grasp in the past 5 years, so this is a case of pot meets kettle.

What are the terms

[SmaryJerry]

Everyone expects their videos to be downloaded, just not saved locally permanently. Assuming they streamed the videos instead of downloading them would that make it okay?

Re:

[ranton]

It may not even matter what the terms are. The first step is to determine if someone is in breach of the terms of service. It appears clear that anyone downloading a video is in breach of that. The next step is to determine if they have a valid defense. That is where fair use doctrine comes in.

You are free to violate any terms of service as long as you can successfully claim a fair use defense. Think of it as killing someone in self defense. There are laws against killing people, just like violating a site'

Re:

[Rockoon]

I watch youtube all the time and have never had to agree to agree to any terms of service

Since when?

[NewtonsLaw]

YouTube doesn't seem to enforce its ban on downloads at all. I see *many* YT videos which include footage from other YT videos and the only way they got that was to download the video so as to include it in their own. One only has to look at they myriad of compilation "FAIL" videos to see this happening.

Even when the original creator files a DMCA claim against such videos, YT will often consider it "fair use" and not penalize the person who has clearly downloaded and then used that footage.

For YT to then come out claiming that it's against their TOS if AI systems do it is a bit rich.

Re:

[thePsychologist]

> I see *many* YT videos which include footage from other YT videos and the only way they got that was to download the video so as to include it in their own.

Actually when you upload a video, you can say whether you want to allow other YouTube creators to sample your video.

Re:

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That ban is also void in countries where making personal use copies of works is explicitly allowed.

Terms of Service

[allo]

Terms of Service only apply if you agreed to them. So as long as the videos are available without account, they may try using copyright or claim that crawling is resource abuse, but cannot argument with their ToS.

How About

[organgtool]

How about letting creators decide if they want their videos to be used to train AI instead of deciding across the board for them? Perhaps a robots.txt equivalent for AI which lets creators opt in.

Wait, what?

[aldousd666]

What did google train their models on? The internet, I'm pretty sure. Pot, meet kettle.

Also, to watch a video, you need to download it

[aldousd666]

There's no watching Videos without downloading them. It cannot possibly be against TOS to download them.

Oh fuck right off

[OfMiceAndMenus]

It does not allow for things like transcripts or video bits to be downloaded, and that is a clear violation of our terms of service.

Unless you pay YouTube for their premium service that lets you download the entire videos...

Also, using videos to train an AI is not "copying the videos" and the AI won't be reproducing the videos in any copyright-violating form. It uses them to train inference, but that isn't the same as directly reproducing all or part of an original video.

It's like asking someone what a banana looks like then drawing your own image based on what they tell you. Yes, there are some similarities but it's not identica

YT's CEO Doesn't Know How Own Service Functions

[thehomeland-org]

A better headline for this quote from the YouTube CEO is, "YouTube CEO Doesn't Understand How Own Service Works At a Fundamental Level," because you have to download videos to see them. If you don't download them, you can't see them.

The browser you are reading this comment with, downloaded the entire page this comment is on, and is rendering it from your device locally as stored data in the cache. Any given video is downloaded in the process of viewing it, in order to view it. If it's against the TOS to do