Mailing List Archive

[Wikimedia-l] Re: Bing-ChatGPT
FWIW YMMV,

Executive Summary:
==================

* I looked into Stable Diffusion recently. BEWARE: The actual technical and legal
situation on the ground with these systems is VERY different from what -say- twitter
will lead you to believe. Also :Everything you know will be wrong and out of
date inside 1-2 months at this time.

* In general: Times are changing. For better or for worse;
if we seize the initiative here, we may be able to advance our cause
considerably.


Stable Diffusion:
==================

I recently got into a kerfluffle elsewhere wrt Stable Diffusion,
which is a similar technology, forcing me to research it in more detail.

Initially I was inclined to take claims by people opposed to SD at face
value, (people claimed with absolute certainty that SD was art-theft,
unethical, out to destroy artists, and all around Bad Guys (tm) ...

... but on researching I was surprised to find:

* SD was FLOSS and scrupulously annotated. (may or may not be
relevant here)

and/or when I looked at the (C) situation one or more of the following
applied:
* there was no copyright whatsoever due to significant non-human input [1].
* Or there was a very strong case for transformative fair use and significant
non-infringing uses as per [2].
* And even IF any actual copying/derivation could be argued, it was de minimis [3]
(on average 2 bits of data per 500000 byte image)


Finally:
* The current rate of innovation in this sphere is dizzying. From ugly
muddy blobs ~12 months ago to <humans have a 50/50 chance to
distinguish between AI generated images and human genareted images>


This situation surprised me somewhat. I would be very interested to see what the
ChatGPT defense will look like.


In general:
=============

On the short term, precedents or
reactive legislation _might_ hurt wikipedia somewhat, but in the mid-term
I have a hope that the (C) system will be found to be in need of an
overhaul anyway. This would then be an opportunity for CC/FLOSS to engage and
advance our goals and advocate for our ethics.


sincerely,
Kim




[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_dispute
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Corp._of_America_v._Universal_City_Studios,_Inc.
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_minimis



On Mon, Feb 20, 2023 at 10:34:16AM +0100, Anders Wennersten wrote:
> BIng with ChatGPT is now released by Micrsoft.
>
> And from what I understand they use Wikipedia content considerably. If you
> ask Who is A B and A B is not widely known, the result is more or less
> identical to the content from the Wikipedia article (but worse, as it "makes
> up" facts that is incorrect).
>
> In a way I am glad to see Wikipedia is fully relevant even in this emerging
> AI-driven search world. But Google search has ben careful to always have a
> link to Wikipedia besides their made up summary of facts, which here it is
> missing (yet?). And for licences, they are all ignored.
>
> So if this is the future the number of? accesses from users to Wikipedia
> will collapse, and also their willingness to donate... (but our content
> still a cornerstone for knowledge)
>
> Anders
>
> (I got a lot of fact from an article in Swedish main newspaper by their tech
> editor. He started asking fact of himself, and when he received facts from
> his Wp article plus being credited to a book he had noting to do with, he
> started to try to tell/learn ChatGPT of this error. The chatPGT only got
> angry accusing the techeditor for lying and in the end cut off the
> conversation, as ChatGPT continued to teat the techeditor as lyer and
> vandal..).
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