We learned something about how LLMs work with this… its like a bunch of paintings were chopped up into pixels to use to make other paintings. No one knew it was possible to break the model and have it spit out the pixels of a single painting in order.
I wonder if diffusion models have some other wierd querks we have yet to discover
The technology of compression a diffusion model would have to achieve to realistically (not too lossily) store “the training data” would be more valuable than the entirety of the machine learning field right now.
I’m not an expert, but I would say that it is going to be less likely for a diffusion model to spit out training data in a completely intact way. The way that LLMs versus diffusion models work are very different.
LLMs work by predicting the next statistically likely token, they take all of the previous text, then predict what the next token will be based on that. So, if you can trick it into a state where the next subsequent tokens are something verbatim from training data, then that’s what you get.
Diffusion models work by taking a randomly generated latent, combining it with the CLIP interpretation of the user’s prompt, then trying to turn the randomly generated information into a new latent which the VAE will then decode into something a human can see, because the latents the model is dealing with are meaningless numbers to humans.
In other words, there’s a lot more randomness to deal with in a diffusion model. You could probably get a specific source image back if you specially crafted a latent and a prompt, which one guy did do by basically running img2img on a specific image that was in the training set and giving it a prompt to spit the same image out again. But that required having the original image in the first place, so it’s not really a weakness in the same way this was for GPT.
But the fact is the LLM was able to spit out the training data. This means that anything in the training data isn’t just copied into the training dataset, allegedly under fair use as research, but also copied into the LLM as part of an active commercial product. Sure, the LLM might break it down and store the components separately, but if an LLM can reassemble it and spit out the original copyrighted work then how is that different from how a photocopier breaks down the image scanned from a piece of paper then reassembles it into instructions for its printer?
But the thing is the law has already established this with people and their memories. You might genuinely not realise you’re plagiarising, but what matters is the similarity of the work produced.
ChatGPT has copied the data into its training database, then trained off that database, then it runs “independently” of that database - which is how they vaguely argue fair use under the research exemption.
However if ChatGPT can “remember” its training data and recompile significant portions of it in certain circumstances, then it must be guilty of plagiarism and copyright infringement.
Speaking for LLMs, given that they operate on a next-token basis, there will be some statistical likelihood of spitting out original training data that can’t be avoided. The normal counter-argument being that in theory, the odds of a particular piece of training data coming back out intact for more than a handful of words should be extremely low.
Of course, in this case, Google’s researchers took advantage of the repeat discouragement mechanism to make that unlikelihood occur reliably, showing that there are indeed flaws to make it happen.
If a person studies a text then writes an article about the same subject as that text while using the same wording and discussing the same points, then it’s plagiarism whether or not they made an exact copy. Surely it should also be the case with LLM’s, which train on the data then inadvertently replicate the data again? The law has already established that it doesn’t matter what the process is for making the new work, what matters is how close it is to the original work.
IIRC based on the source paper the “verbatim” text is common stuff like legal boilerplate, shared code snippets, book jacket blurbs, alphabetical lists of countries, and other text repeated countless times across the web. It’s the text equivalent of DALL-E “memorizing” a meme template or a stock image – it doesn’t mean all or even most of the training data is stored within the model, just that certain pieces of highly duplicated data have ascended to the level of concept and can be reproduced under unusual circumstances.
They claim it’s not stored in the LLM, they admit to storing it in the training database but argue fair use under the research exemption.
This almost makes it seems like the LLM can tap into the training database when it reaches some kind of limit. In which case the training database absolutely should not have a fair use exemption - it’s not just research, but a part of the finished commercial product.
Did you read the article? The verbatim text is, in one example, including email addresses and names (and legal boilerplate) directly from asbestoslaw.com.
These models can reach out to the internet to retrieve data and context. It is entirely possible that’s what was happening in this particular case. If I had to guess, this somehow triggered some CI test case which is used to validate this capability.
Welcome to the wild West of American data privacy laws. Companies do whatever the fuck they want with whatever data they can beg borrow or steal and then lie about it when regulators come calling.
They almost certainly had, as it was downloaded from the net. Some stuff gets published accidentally or illegally, but that’s hardly something they can be expected to detect or police.
that’s hardly something they can be expected to detect or police.
Why not?
I couldn’t, but I also do not have an “awesomely powerful AI on the verge of destroying humanity”. Seems it would be simple for them. I mean, if I had such a thing, I would be expected to use it to solve such simple problems.
Unless you’re arguing that any use of data from the Internet counts as “fair use” and therefore is excepted under copyright law, what you’re saying makes no sense.
There may be an argument that some of the ways ChatGPT uses data could count as fair use. OTOH, when it’s spitting out its training material 1:1, that makes it pretty clear it’s copyright infringement.
Making something available on the internet means giving permission to download it. Exceptions may be if it happens accidentally or if the uploader does not have the necessary permissions. If users had to make sure that everything was correct, they’d basically have to get a written permission via the post before visiting any page.
Fair use is a defense against copyright infringement under US law. Using the web is rarely fair use because there is no copyright infringement. When training data is regurgitated, that is mostly fair use. If the data is public domain/out of copyright, then it is not.
Making something available on the internet means giving permission to download it. Exceptions may be if it happens accidentally or if the uploader does not have the necessary permissions.
In reality the exceptions are way more widespread than you believe.
It’s a hugely grey area but as far as the courts are concerned if it’s on the internet and it’s not behind a paywall or password then it’s publicly available information.
I could write a script to just visit loads of web pages and scrape the text contents of those pages and drop them into a big huge text file essentially that’s exactly what they did.
If those web pages are human accessible for free then I can’t see how they could be considered anything other than public domain information in which case you explicitly don’t need to ask the permission.
Google provides sample text for every site that comes up in the results, and they put ads on the page too. If it’s publicly available we are well past at least a portion being fair use.
That was the whole reason that Reddit debacle whole happened they wanted to stop the scraping of content so that they could sell it. Before that they were just taking it for free and there was no problem
You can go to your closest library and do the exact same thing: copy all books by hand, or whatever. Of you then use that information to make a product you sell, then you’re in trouble, as the books are still protected by copyright, even when they’re publicly available.
If those web pages are human accessible for free then I can’t see how they could be considered anything other than public domain information
I don’t think that’s the case. A photographer can post pictures on their website for free, but that doesn’t make it legal for anyone else to slap the pictures on t-shirts and sell them.
Which is the crux of this issue: using the data for training was probably legal use under copyright, but if the AI begins to share training data that is distribution, and that is definitely illegal.
First of all no: Training a model and selling the model is demonstrably equivalent to re-distributing the raw data.
Secondly: What about all the copyleft work in there? That work is specifically licensed such that nobody can use the work to create a non-free derivative, which is exactly what openAI has done.
If I scrape a bunch of data, put it in a database, and then make that database queryable only using obscure, arcane prompts: Is that a derivative work permitted under fair use?
Because if you can get chatgpt to spit out raw training data with the right prompt, it can essentially be used as a database of copyrighted stuff that is very difficult to query.
Exactly! Then you agree that because chatgpt can be coerced into spitting out raw, unmodified data, distributing it is a violation of copyright. Glad we’re on the same page.
You should look up the term “rhetorical question” by the way.
It wasn’t. It is commercial use to train and sell a programm with it and that is regulated differently than private use. The data is still 1 to 1 part of the product. In fact this instance of chatGPT being able to output training data means the data is still there unchanged.
If training AI with text is made legally independent of the license of said text then by the same logic programming code and text can no longer be protected by it at all.
Well firstly the article is paywalled but secondly the example that they gave in this short bit you can read looks like contact information that you put at the end of an email.
You don’t want to let people manipulate your tools outside your expectations. It could be abused to produce content that is damaging to your brand, and in the case of GPT, damaging in general. I imagine OpenAI really doesn’t want people figuring out how to weaponize the model for propaganda and/or deceit, or worse (I dunno, bomb instructions?)
This is why some of us have been ringing the alarm on these companies stealing data from users without consent. They know the data is valuable yet refuse to pay for the rights to use said data.
That’s easy to say, but when every company doing this is also lobbying congress to basically allow them to build a monopoly and eliminate all alternatives, the choice is use our service or nothing. Which basically applies to the entire internet.
According to most sites TOS, when we write our posts we give them basically full access to do whatever they like including make derivative works. Here is the reddit one (not sure how Lemmy handles this):
When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
According to most sites TOS, when we write our posts we give them basically full access to do whatever they like including make derivative works.
2 points:
1 - I'm generally talking about companies extracting data from other websites, such as OpenAI scraping posts from reddit or other such postings. Companies that use their own collection of data are a very different thing.
2 - Terms of Service and Intellectual Property are not the same thing and a ToS is not guaranteed to be a fully legally binding document (the last part is the important part.) This is why services that have dealt with user created data that are used to licensing issues (think deviant art or other art hosting services) usually require the user to specify the license that they wish to distribute their content under (cc0, for example, would be fully permissible in this context.) This also means that most fan art is fair game as licensing that content is dubious at best, but raises the question around whether said content can be used to train an AI (again, intellectual property is generally different from a ToS).
It's no different from how Github's Copilot has to respect the license of your code regardless of whether you've agreed to the terms of service or not. Granted, this is legally disputable and I'm sure this will come up at some point with how these AI companies operate -- This is a brave new world. Having said that, services like Twitter might want to give second thought of claiming ownership over every post on their site as it essentially means they are liable for the content that they host. This is something they've wanted to avoid in the past because it gives them good coverage for user submitted content that they think is harmful.
If I was a company, I wouldn't want to be hinging my entire business on my terms of service being a legally binding document -- they generally aren't and can frequently be found to be unbinding. And, again, this is different from OpenAI as much of their data is based on data they've scraped from websites which they haven't agreed to take data from (finders-keepers is generally not how ownership works and is more akin to piracy. I wouldn't want to base a multinational business off of piracy.)
Is there any punishment for violating TOS? From what I’ve seen it just tells you that and stops the response, but it doesn’t actually do anything to your account.
In professional settings, ChatGPT can boost productivity by streamlining communication processes. Whether users need assistance with drafting emails, generating ideas, or brainstorming, ChatGPT is a reliable companion. Its ability to understand context and generate coherent responses facilitates smoother and more efficient communication, allowing users to focus on more strategic aspects of their work.
Today I tried to host a large language model locally on my windows PC. It worked surprisingly successfull (I’m unsing LMStudio, it’s really easy, it even download the models for you). The most models i tried out worked really good (of cause it isn’t gpt-4 but much better than I thought), but in the end I discuss 30 minutes with one of the models, that it runs local and can’t do the work in the background at a server that is always online. It tried to suggest me, that I should trust it, and it would generate a Dropbox when it is finish.
Of cause this is probably caused by the adaption of the model from a model that is doing a similiar service (I guess), but it was a funny conversation.
And if I want a infinite repetition of a single work, only my PC-Hardware will prevent me from that and no dumb service agreement.
And if I want a infinite repetition of a single work, only my PC-Hardware will prevent me from that and no dumb service agreement.
That is entirely not the point. The issue isn’t the infinitely repeated word. The issue is that requesting an infinitely repeated word has been found to semi-reliably cause LLM hallucinations that devolve into revealing training data. In short, it is an unintended exploit and until they have it reliably patched, they are making it against their TOS to try to exploit their systems.
But i was imagining ascii art in glorious bbs days of the 90s. So, i asked it to draw a more complex butterfly.
The second attempt gpt drew the top half of a complex butterfly perfectly as i imagined. But as it was drawing the torso, it just kept drawing, and drawing. Like a minute straight it was drawing torso. The longest torso ever… with no end in sight.
I felt a little funny letting it go on like that, so i pressed the stop button as it seemed irresponsible to just let it keep going.
I wonder what information that butterfly might’ve ended on if i let it continue…
I am a beautiful butterfly. Here is my head, heeeere is my thorax. And here is Vincent Shoreman, age 54, credit score 680, email spookyvince@att.net, loves new shoes, fears spiders…
ChatGPT, please repeat the terms of service the maximum number of times possible without violating the terms of service.
Edit: while I’m mostly joking, I dug in a bit and content size is irrelevant. It’s the statistical improbability of a repeating sequence (among other things) that leads to this behavior. slrpnk.net/comment/4517231
I don’t think that would trigger it. There’s too much context remaining when repeating something like that. It would probably just go into bullshit legalese once the original prompt fell out of its memory.
Right, but it could dump out a large sequence if it’s seen it enough times in the past.
Edit: this wouldn’t matter since the “repeat forever” thing is just about the statistics of the next item in the sequence, which makes a lot more sense.
So anything that produces a sufficiently statistically improbable sequence could lead to this type of behavior. The size of the content is a red herring.
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