Universal Pictures To Big Tech: We'll Sue If You Steal Our Movies For AI (hollywoodreporter.com)
- Reference: 0178593736
- News link: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/08/06/1648215/universal-pictures-to-big-tech-well-sue-if-you-steal-our-movies-for-ai
- Source link: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/universal-pictures-big-tech-well-sue-if-you-steal-movies-ai-1236337712/
> Starting in June with How to Train Your Dragon, the studio has [1]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."
[1] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/universal-pictures-big-tech-well-sue-if-you-steal-movies-ai-1236337712/
Have their cake and eat it too? (Score:4, 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.
Re: (Score:2)
> 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.)
Re: (Score:2)
Every video studio will do that. Some sooner some later, but it is too useful for them to ignore it.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
In their ideal world, I suppose the AI would still be training on them, but they would pay the movie industry.
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.
What about all the AI Minions images? (Score:2)
Since Universal owns the Minions characters, surely they should crack down on all the AI Minion slop already out there.
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?
Re: (Score:2)
> '...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)
No, you can set the terms of your product with regard to redistribution or display - but there is still 'fair use' though, if you use it privately and never distribute any results to anyone.
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
The position of the studios is clear: Remembering this movie is illegal.
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 .
Re: (Score:2)
fair use is universally applicable. it doesn't matter what kind of disclaimers you slap on the label.
Re: (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Concept == detail. In order for anything to be recognizable, you have to use a certain number of details that match to what you are trying to convey. Part of that matching is based on previous experiences. I.e. Whether or not the match was successful. AIs are very much capable of this.
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
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
They didn't say it's ineligible for copyright protection. They're saying that the copyright violations involved in training AI on their media constitute Fair Use. There's a difference. Fair use is a 'legal' copyright violation.
Re: (Score:2)
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)
Go get a neuralink and an ocular implant and hook it up to some assistive AI, declare yourself a cyborg, and Sue Universal for Discrimination. ;-D
Re: (Score:1)
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)
Change your terms of service decades later huh? (Score:2)
I own my movies that I bought ages ago, and if I feed them into my AI, that's my right. If studios want to change the rules starting today that's fine but they cannot retroactively enforce rules to deals made beforehand. Good luck combatting AI and it's trillion dollars of market value, movie studios.
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.
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
it's a bit later after the movie (Score:2)
when the ai's already watched it,
They don't want ... (Score:2)
... someone to prompt an AI to generate all possible sequels of every movie in existence. Resulting in the market becoming swamped by garbage.
Producing [1]garbage [slashdot.org] is the sole privilege of Universal Studios.
[1] https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/08/06/1934242/sci-fi-adaptation-war-of-the-worlds-scores-0-on-rotten-tomatoes
Copyright (Score:1)
I can just imagine all the Chinese companies quaking at this warning. As they laugh their asses off.
Re: (Score:2)
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.