Universal Pictures To Big Tech: We'll Sue If You Steal Our Movies For AI (hollywoodreporter.com) 71
Universal Pictures is taking a new approach to combat mass theft of its movies to teach AI systems. From a report: Starting in June with How to Train Your Dragon, the studio has attached a legal warning at the end credits of its films stating that their titles "may not be used to train AI." It's also appeared on Jurassic World Rebirth and Bad Guys 2. "This motion picture is protected under the laws of the United States and other countries," the warning reads. "Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution."
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I really like the AI haters to understand that, but one must say that confusing copyright infringement and theft comes originally from the movie studios and music labels. Their campaigns are probably the reason why people get it wrong nowadays.
Have their cake and eat it too? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, movie companies want to use AI to make movies with, destroying thousands of jobs in the entertainment industry. All the while refusing to allow that very same AI to be trained on said movies.
We'll see if movie companies can have their cake and eat it too.
Re:Have their cake and eat it too? (Score:4, Insightful)
Official statement from Universal:
"Do as we say, not as we do"
Statement ends.
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Official statement from Universal:
"Do as we say, not as we do"
Statement ends.
Official response from Techbros:
lololololololololololololololol.... we'll pay you like we pay taxes.
Message ends.
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So, movie companies want to use AI to make movies with, destroying thousands of jobs in the entertainment industry. All the while refusing to allow that very same AI to be trained on said movies.
Do you have a citation that Universal Studios is using AI to make movies with?
(and, the discussion is about the subset of AI that uses other movies to be trained with, not solid modeling AI that is used for 3D effects and CGI physics modeling.)
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Every video studio will do that. Some sooner some later, but it is too useful for them to ignore it.
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Sometimes the posts here make me wonder what kind of tech careers people have had to be saying the shit they do.
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Oh jesus shut the fuck up.
Look buddy I promise you Universal is using fucking AI you dipshit.
Have you ever had a job? Yes. They're fucking using AI.
Jesus christ some of you will come up with any excuse not to villainize obvious villains.
Oh but wait but wait... what if things aren't as they seem. I'd hate to unfairly judge a major corporation!
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Oh jesus shut the fuck up. Look buddy I promise you Universal is using fucking AI you dipshit.
From experience, I have learned that the statement "look I'm right I promise you I don't need a source I'm right," is a phrase that means "I just made this shit up."
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This is true and sometimes ignorance is so obvious you don't bother arguing.
From experience, I have learned that
And your experience is shallow and you learned not a lot.
At least not professional expereince.
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There are some obvious differences between what is fair use, and what isn't. For example, copyright says that you can't copyright a concept, but you can copyright the wording/names and other aspects of a book or movie. Now, for a human, sure, you can watch a movie, and then make your own movie with a similar storyline as long as it isn't a direct copy of the work you are making a copy of. For AI, it doesn't understand CONCEPTS, so any duplication or use by AI really is a duplication of the original.
Us
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Why bring up fair use at all? If they buy a copy, the first-sale doctrine [wikipedia.org] says they can do what they want with it. The movie studio has no say in what they do with a purchased DVD.
You might say converting it to a format that the model can learn from is a violation of copyright. I suspect this is covered by first-sale doctrine, just as you are allowed to watch the movie, even if that process involves copying data.
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To be clear, I am assuming they WILL NOT use the AI to make a copycat movie. That's a strawman I won't bother to discuss.
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AI is being used to put characters from movies into this or that, and because these AI systems are commercial products, those who control those AI systems need to have the rights granted to them, or it is copyright violation. Want to make new episodes of Firefly using AI, even if it's just for your own viewing, that AI system is now reproducing things it doesn't have the rights to reproduce.
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I agree completely. But that has nothing to do with the training. Maybe they need to use another system on the output end to decide whether the answer is unlawful. (Or this could be accomplished by secondary training. And while they're at it, they filter out some of the bullshit masquerading as fact.)
Nitpick: that's probably a trademark violation, not copyright.
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So, you copy my work, you train by watching me....so, why don't you give me 20% of all of your future earnings, because you used my experience to make money for yourself.
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I can't interpret your comment as describing anything other than corporate espionage, which is obviously not related to buying and analyzing a DVD.
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You are not allowed to reproduce the works in whole or in part without a fully signed agreement for that. Do you really think these AI companies are paying the source for the data they are using/copying? If you ask AI, "give me a script of the movie", then that's the sign that the AI system has STOLEN from the owners, because it is making a form of duplicate, in the same way someone using a cell phone in a movie theater with the intent to distribute it is violating copyright.
Have you seen any sign that
Re:Have their cake and eat it too? (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, your use of the word "stealing" is off-putting. When I steal your car, you don't have the car anymore. So no scripts are being stolen in this scenario.
If you ask AI, "give me a script of the movie", then that's the sign that the AI system has STOLEN from the owners, because it is making a form of duplicate
What if the system refuses? I think the standard you might be using is "if the network has enough implicit information to reconstruct the script", but I'd argue that's the wrong standard. We don't punish people with good memories who watch movies. It's also not strict enough--if a portion of the work is redistributed outside of fair use, it's still unlawful. But most importantly, it's a weird abstraction. If the model refuses to divulge a script, a judge may ask where exactly the infringement occurred. The only thing you can point to is the training, and the defendant will say something like, "none of that was copied; it was just used as fodder to generate impressions". I'm interested in whether a court or congress will decide ingestion is copyright violation, but so far it's just a claim movie studios are making.
Note: if the work was pirated, that would also be a copyright violation. But it would have nothing to do with the LLM.
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How much work goes into making a movie, or TV show? Casting, getting the right chemistry between the actors, and then the, "I see problems with the script, so we need to make some changes" side of things. Training an AI by its nature, is the sort of thing that is so open to misuse or abuse, it is stealing the EFFORT put in to come up with something original. And yes, many of these movies/shows aren't terribly original, but what makes something popular is why some shows do well, and others poorly.
So, i
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Tools designed to facilitate crime are often illegal, so, AI training on your work, what are the chances it is something that won't end up being used illegally, even if you CAN use AI without doing anything wrong?
Do you think AI is designed to do something unlawful? Do you think the majority of the uses are unlawful? I don't think even a significant proportion of uses are illegal. It's more like a modem than a bong.
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And of course, not for the price of a single blu-ray. That's the question, is training permitted under that "EULA."
Nit (Score:2)
The original version of the phrase is "eat their cake and have it too." Anyone can have their cake and then eat it. But once it is eaten, it is no longer had. So the original formulation actually makes sense.
Re: Have their cake and eat it too? (Score:2)
Did you not see the article about Disney not using AI due to questions about copyright protections?
Until that legal issue is sorted out, big studios don't want to risk losing copyright protections for their films
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Anyone can have a cake and eat it.
Eating a cake and having it too - that's more difficult.
What about all the AI Minions images? (Score:2)
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Forbidden Truth: Universal actually makes most Minion memes themselves.
I can't afford an army of lawyers (Score:2)
But if I could, I would sue you too for stealing my posts to train AI.
But but but (Score:5, Funny)
My AI's name is "Your Dragon." You publish an feature-film-length instructional video and you expect me to NOT use it???
they can state it, so what? (Score:5, Interesting)
'...their titles "may not be used to train AI." '
What legal basis are they claiming?
"Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution."
What part of training is any of these things?
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'...their titles "may not be used to train AI." '
What legal basis are they claiming?
Basic copyright law. If you hold the copyright, you can set the terms of what can be done with your product. Look up copyleft - authors can set the terms as to what can be done with their work product.
The only defense would be fair use which, to my knowledge, hasn't been extended to cover AI training, and there have been a handful of court cases deciding it isn't..
Re:they can state it, so what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes it's a stretch, but Copyright's purpose is not to control how people consume your content, but to protect that content from being 'redistributed or disseminated' without the holder's consent. Private use is still a thing, well, until they make it legal for content holders to proactively search your private property. But at that point civilized society is already dead.
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The open question is whether generating content from the training is -- in any form -- redistribution. The contention of the AI companies is that it is sufficiently transformational. They argue that the fact that the LLM *could* generate images that are copyright infringing doesn't invalidate all the uses that are not infringing, and it is on the person doing the generation and distributing the result to check if the generated images violate someone's copyright. No court to the best of my knowledge has yet
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The only differences between a computer's data storage and a human's is encoding and meat. So if the studios are saying it's illegal for a computer to remember their movies, it's illegal for you too. They just haven't found a way to enforce it, yet.
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The position of the studios is clear: Remembering this movie is illegal.
What movie?
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Is writing a review or a summary of a movie and posting it on the internet still fair use?
Let's be honest, if the studios had their way, of course they'd prefer it to be illegal to summarize a film's plot.
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Fair use only applies to things you personally might do with it, but an AI system is doing things with the material for others. Do you personally own the AI system, or are you using an AI system controlled by others? So sure, if you have your own AI system, you feed into it whatever, that's fair use, but you are not allowed to redistribute anything the AI came up with to a third party, without there being a clear granting of permission by the content owner(s).
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Because AI does not understand the idea of CONCEPTS, using AI to capture the details of what others do is fully copying it. The AI now has all the details needed to fully reproduce the work, including to make characters that look exactly like the original actors. That is why AI scraping should be seen as theft. Google had to go through this as well, when search results come up with direct information from another web page, that is clear theft without giving proper credit to the original source, includ
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Like always however, the maximalists want even the slightest match equaling a pay out for them. Damn be fair use. (They'd abolish it entirely and charge the entire world back pay if they could.) So having any detail that the
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Copyright ... but it doesn't really matter, they are under no obligation to be correct.
Every major website should simply add a footer declaring any use of the content for training without a license infringes their copyrights and doing so was also infringing before the footer was added.
AI edumucashun. (Score:2)
'...their titles "may not be used to train AI." '
What legal basis are they claiming?
"Unauthorized duplication, distribution or exhibition may result in civil liability and criminal prosecution."
What part of training is any of these things?
What part of AI needs to be trained by Hollyweird?
Seriously. Would we sit our own children down to such a catalog for “training” purposes? Why? To delude a young mind even further about reality?
No thanks. Even PBS can’t prove they’re up for the unbiased task, and Disney lost their fucking innocence long ago. We don’t need AI infected by that shit.
Too late. (Score:2)
I think the courts have already ruled on the ineligibility of such works for copyright protection when used as part of a dataset for AI training.
Good luck Universal, can you afford to buy the right judge?
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The point is, that if the USE constitutes fair use, there is no copyright violation.
Simple way to understand it:
Is copyright applicable at all?
Is the work trivial? If yes, then it isn't applicable.
Does a exception as fair use apply? Then it is not applicable.
If it is not, you're free to train your AI.
If it is applicable, the next questions are about licenses.
Is the work already public domain? Use it.
Is it under a public license? Use it, do what the license says
Is there an offer to buy it automatically (e.g.
Fun thought... (Score:2)
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the old "industrial revolution" analogy is so fucking weak but it gets used over and over and over again.
AI is not for the benefit of society. get that through your thick fucking skull so we can finally get on the same page, which is stopping it before it destroys our fucking society and humanity as we know it. (and no im not talking Skynet retard shit. im talking degrading humanity to teh point no one cares or respects anything regarding civilization, we're already well on our way)
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Exactly. Total automation could take humanity into a state of perpetual learning and leisure or could take us into levels of wealth inequality never before seen under capitalism.
The ruling class jumped the gun they they got a chatbot that can play a convincing anime girl. Let us not pretend that this is the next automobile and be frank about how this is gonna get used.
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Dude take your buggy whip analogies and shove them up your tailpipe.
Try having some original ideas instead of tired corporate propaganda.
Change your terms of service decades later huh? (Score:2)
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You can feed them into your own AI, but you can't show any resulting output to others. Going back, if you make an audio CD with different music tracks from music you purchased, that is fair use, but if you now give copies of that audio CD to others, that is now a copyright violation. If you use sound samples for your own music, you still have to compensate the people who own the rights to the music, you have NOT purchased the right to redistribute in part or in whole anything.
die scummen (Score:1)
IP should have been killed long ago, the concept was expanded beyond its capacity when it was moved outside of the domain of protection for artists. The idea that you can own an idea is a lie, and you certainly do not get exclusive rights to technology or truth of any kind.
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As a person, you can listen or watch something, but to make your own duplicate, you would need to hire the people needed for your own rendition, wouldn't you? For a movie, you would need the full set of special effects people, actors, everything involved in the making of a movie. For AI, do you personally own the AI system, or are you using the AI system that someone else owns/controls? At that point, reproduction by an AI, in whole, or in part, is a violation of copyright laws.
Training AI is not theft (Score:2, Redundant)
It's exactly equal to training a human mind
There may be a need for new laws, but using words like "theft" is ridiculous
Good luck going after Chinese AIs (Score:2)
The CCP may ban your movies from China if you sue Deepseek.
Whatever (Score:2)
And movies start by telling you that you go to jail if you copy them. This neither stops people from copying, nor gets the people who are caught into jail.
And for the AI companies the situation is simple: Either the fair use claim holds, then Universal Pictures keep their Anti AI messages to themselves, or it does not hold and the AI company can file bancrupt because they would need to ask everyone for licenses. Universal Pictures content is only a tiny fraction of what will go into the video models and if
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Generally, making a copy for your own use won't get you in trouble, but if you make copies for others, that is when your argument breaks down. People do not own AI systems powerful enough to do much, so then, those who own/control those AI systems are the ones who are violating the idea of fair use. If you have the millions or billions of dollars needed for your own AI system to do stuff with copyrighted materials you have purchased, then fine, but then, you won't have the right to give the output to ot
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That's right and the part of "And employees had general access to it for other purposes" of one of the lawsuits IS a problem, just as it is if they can prove they uploaded stuff they torrented. All the exceptions are only valid if you use the data only for the purpose that the exception applies to. You can't say "That's my fair use data for AI training and because I train AI I am also allowed to watch the movies" but you need to make sure they can only be used for AI training.
I was quite surprised with the
it's a bit later after the movie (Score:2)
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The AI might "have the right" to watch it, but then, anything it does with the movies can't be given to others, that's where the copyright issues come in. This is why you can make a backup of movies you have purchased, it's a part of fair use, but if you then make copies to give to all of your friends, you have now broken the copyright laws.
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They don't want ... (Score:2)
Producing garbage [slashdot.org] is the sole privilege of Universal Studios.
Copyright (Score:1)
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That'll keep it off pirate bay, too!
Big tech to Universal Pictures (Score:2)
Our legal system is now less about the letter of the law and more about who can outbid who on bribes.
Doesn't mean squat (Score:1)