Reported by The Verge AI
In the NYT’s case against OpenAI, the Wikimedia Foundation says training AI should be fair use — but regurgitating articles shouldn’t.
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The Wikimedia Foundation is staking out a middle ground in a group of landmark AI copyright cases, pushing courts to legally protect large language models (LLMs) training on copyrighted work — but not chatbots regurgitating that work to users. An overly black-and-white ruling, it says, could either deprive Wikipedians of useful AI-based tools or endanger the open web.
More from the original report
In an amicus brief filed Friday, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia weighed in on a set of lawsuits pitting publishers including The New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, taking neither side. “Wikimedia is concerned that the parties’ positions in this case push for overbroad and simplified applications of the fair use doctrine” around AI, the organization says in its legal filing. A nuance-free victory for publishers, it fears, could let copyright holders “gatekeep” even innovative and transformative uses of their work. On the other hand, a victory for AI companies could constitute “a green light to snub licensing terms and fragment the flow of knowledge between human authors and audiences.”
“Wikimedia is concerned that the parties’ positions in this case push for overbroad and simplified applications of the fair use doctrine”
The ruling could be existential for Wikipedia. Wikimedia websites “have become one of the most critical sources of data for all artificial intelligence and machine learning training,” the company says in the filing. But these same systems siphon away visitors , undermining the communities that maintain these sites. Wikimedia argues that they’re also violating copyright: services like ChatGPT reproduce text that’s licensed freely under Creative Commons, it says, but don’t adhere to the terms of that license.
At the same time, it says, the large language models that power these systems are useful to Wikipedia: they can help editors fight vandalism, detect copyright violations and doxxing, and look for articles that need improvement, among other uses.
“A ruling that does not apply fair use…