The key point in all these AI training lawsuits is "transformative use".
If an LLM trains on NYT articles is the output of the model a substitute for the original article? Or will people continue to pay for the New York Times as before?
Whether they build a business around it doesn't really matter. Plenty of large businesses depend on fair use to avoid copyright lawsuits, including any tech company that hosts any kind of content (YouTube, Reddit, Meta). Even the media itself relies on fair use to be able to air any content.
> Plenty of large businesses depend on fair use to avoid copyright lawsuits, including any tech company that hosts any kind of content (YouTube, Reddit, Meta).
Those companies don't rely on fair use. They rely on the DMCA. There's an agreement with the user for use of content where the user controls the rights, and anything that users upload where someone else controls the rights, DMCA protects the site as long as they follow the procedures.
> Does building a business around the automation of fair use constitute fair use? I would say no.
This seems like an excellent and very clear distinction. Once it becomes a wholesale harvesting and processing for financial gain, it stops being fair use. Fair use clearly has a magnitude component.
It does appear to synthesize the audio with a wasm module compiled from rust, presumably developed as a python script first based on the source comments.
To the credit of the author there is also an attribution file which describes a process of deriving the models from recordings (none of the techniques are very novel, but it's fairly impressive to see automated -- edit: I assume the project is LLM-generated) https://github.com/celphase/duck-pond/blob/main/ATTRIBUTION....
The project was created with significant LLM use, I'd add claude as a co-contributor if I could do so manually. I don't personally like to have it added as a co-author on commits on my own projects, though I always make sure it's there if I submit PRs using it.
Honestly I can't take credit for any major input on it other than a few technical choices. Audio is entirely outside my wheelhouse beyond what happens at the platform API level.
The process involved running the LLM in a loop to gradually correct parameters of a synthesis stack to have the spectrogram of the output match the spectrogram of a real recorded sample. One funny part is where the synthesis was marked by a classification model as more duck than the real duck sample.
I'm super late to this, but I'm looking through the code, being inspired to figure out how it works, and one thing you mention is that synth.rs is a port of synth.py. Is the python code anywhere I would LOVE to get hold of it, rather than make a dirty port from scratch if possible.
> the synthesis was marked by a classification model as more duck than the real duck sample
The quality of a recording can throw off most classifiers.
Models we have today are so dependent on the quality of training data, that it's questionable how we will sustain long term what we are currently calling "AI".
i.e. What happens when the cameras and microphones everyone has in their pockets are significantly higher quality and the AI model hasn't had a total refresh in a long time? How does that cause classification to drift enough to fail?
I think you're right, and we've been training ourselves for the shortest path of least resistance for quite a while while kidding ourselves that we're able to somehow preserve the result as worthwhile. Before I ever tried using LLMs for search I had already been training myself for years to offload my thinking to a quick web search and a skim of some plausible result served up.
Arguably things like Cliff's Notes and "for dummies" books were sating this impulse before that, I wouldn't be surprised if the line can be traced back further.
Since dropping LLMs altogether I've made the connection to the impulse for a superficial jump to the conclusion just by noticing how I use web search, or feverishly scan some text to get to the point.
Theoretically I studied critical thinking and have learned decades ago how to recognize when this is OK and when it's a superficial placation of some addiction to closing the book on a subject or micro-subject... but boy whatever good instincts I might have developed back then have significantly eroded over time. Trying to reclaim that again is pretty humbling.
I guess this is a boring and predictable thing to say, but I miss seeing a project like this and being excited about it. Instead I looked at the codebase, see that it seems LLM-generated and assume it hasn't had much thought or care put into it, so I'm not really motivated to even try it out. Sorry. :-/
Does it do what it says on the tin? If so, does it matter that it's made with an LLM?
In my own experience, LLMs+TUIs are surprisingly effective. They deal with the tedium of ncurses development much more than I can. It took an LLM about an hour to put a TUI over recutils so that I can monitor task progress. I doubt I could have done the same that shortly. My point is, 'that it works' is much more important to me than how it works.
I'll come out and say it, heavily AI-assisted. First rust project, and wanted to dive on in with something that I'd been wanting to make. Lots of iteration, almost entirely free opencode tier models and agentic edits. I know what behavior I'm looking for though, and rust is pretty good at finding obvious errors (clippy too). It's not a production app, and it's just for fun, so ya. :)
Perhaps one needs to go a level up: if making the program is now semi-trivial, it remains to be proven if using the program to actually perform is. If I have a Star Trek replicator that can reproduce a perfect Stradivarius for me, is it any less impressive when I play a beautiful song on it?
If we want to get excited about a mixing board... we probably need to see someone using it in ways that traditional mixers don't facilitate.
exactly this. Id think the main thing for this would be to get midi controllers working. its a digital tool for digital djs. looks a bit niche ofc if you look at 'the market' etc. but as OP said for newer thigs like algorave and just for fun it looks pretty cool :D.
id love this workin on a phone with a little usb-c midi controller attached!
> assume it hasn't had much thought or care put into it
> I'm not really motivated to even try it out
That's a little uncharitable. I get where it's coming from, because I also still feel a tinge of (hypocritical) disappointment when I realize things are built with LLMs, but I truly think we need to start moving past this. It's not a giant corporation trying to scam you out of your hard earned money by passing slop off as a lovingly crafted product: it's somebody's pet project, somebody who clearly had a fun "what if" idea and was able to materialize it over time, with a TBD amount of care/iteration/refinement. I think it's something worth engaging with. Worst case scenario it sucks, like many cheapo projects do -- best case scenario it's awesome and/or it sparks a new interesting idea in somebody else.
The irony was that Sony wanted all those CDs on streaming, so they sent them to me to rip because they didn't have any other proper digital copy for ingestion at the time. (It wasn't just the rootkit ones, either, they tried a bunch of other really ugly methods across their catalogue to stop the CDs being useable in a CD-ROM drive)
"To begin, it is useful to remember that all iPods play music that is free of any DRM and encoded in “open” licensable formats such as MP3 and AAC. iPod users can and do acquire their music from many sources, including CDs they own. Music on CDs can be easily imported into the freely-downloadable iTunes jukebox software which runs on both Macs and Windows PCs, and is automatically encoded into the open AAC or MP3 formats without any DRM. This music can be played on iPods or any other music players that play these open formats."
And this part might be interesting in the context of the article:
"The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.
Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy."
I'd say Steve was actually wrong here. The move to streaming (which Apple had a big part in pushing, directly or indirectly), is actually what halted music privacy. Giving access to all music (I remember the big deal Apple made when they were finally able to sell The Beatles on iTunes), and making it easier than privacy is what stopped it.
He's right that DRM alone didn't stop it, but at the same time you can't really say it didn't help. If we could just download Spotify playlists and share DRM free files with out friends, there would be no reason to subscribe to Spotify on an ongoing basis.
Hollywood still hasn't figured that out, but given how little artists get paid, maybe that's what they haven't push for the same.
Still why I like DVDs. Smaller in size, easy to rip, and 480p is good enough that I don't mind the quality loss. Blu-ray is great, but if I'm buying something I'm not sure about or just want to have because it's worth having, DVD all the way
While that's true, it glosses over the battle to make DVDs convenient. Hollywood did not want them to be convenient, they wanted them region-locked and unrippable, and spent a fortune prosecuting anyone who thought otherwise:
On a small display that I usually want to watch digital movies on, it's fine. 720p is the minimum for anything I actually want to watch/enjoy watching. Like I said, a lot of stuff I have on DVD is stuff that is good to have that I'll probably never watch regularly
I like 4K UHD HDR Blu Rays very much and have a big TV to take advantage of them but I agree with gp that 480p is good enough in the sense that a good movie will still be enjoyable in 480p. And if you are engrossed in what you are watching you won't even notice the reduced detail. There are some DVDs with atrocious encode quality with a much lower effective resolution due to low bitrate (i.e. multiple full length flicks squeezed onto one DVD) or unfortunate processing (NTSC master -> PAL DVD release or the inverse is to be avoided) but that's thankfully rare.
Now, 480i is something I'd rather leave behind but even that is a lesser concern than the content of the film.
I recently started collecting Blu-ray because of thrift and second hand stores. In a few cases, I was able to purchase some of my all time favorite movies unopened in the original retail packaging for a dollar. Not to mention my local library has a larger Blu-ray selection than my local video rental place did before they closed.
Exactly. I mean sure, people were definitely pirating music. But lots of people are own huge collections of CDs, and you could also just borrow other people's CDs to rip them. We were kids without money, but older folks at the time did spend money on CDs.
> and you could also just borrow other people's CDs to rip them
Which is "piracy" - not that that makes it ethically wrong. It's actually the main kind of copying that is targeted by DRM since users of the LimeWire kind never see that.
Which is why we should never use the word "piracy." Don't let the industry dictate language (for their own benefit). Equating sharing music with a friend to robbery and murder on the high seas is a wildly out of touch exaggeration. If we let booksellers dictate language in the same way, they'd call libraries and book clubs organized crime.
Agreed, I didn't put the word in quotes on accident. I'm just quite happy to point out that copyright infringement is something that every day people do without thinking and not restricted to the realm of hardened cyber criminals aka. nerds with an internet connection.
I still borrow CDs to rip, lol. Half my digital music library comes from my library having a way better library of music than books (at least for my taste)
Yeah, GP is rose-tinting piracy and Apple’s stance a bit…
When I was a teenager we had _dial-up_. My first 2 iPods were strictly playing ripped CDs, which I, friends, or family had bought. Buying the iPod itself was probably cheaper than 2 months worth of internet traffic back then.
It took about 30 minutes to get 3.5 MB mp3 song over dial up. I would let downloads run overnight and could get a dozen songs by next day. I would do my bulk mp3 downloading in the morning before class at schools library to immediately transfer over USB to my 4 GB Archos Jukebox hard drive mp3 player. That was around 2001 - 2003 either before schools blocked p2p or I must have been using public file downloading sites.
Hmm, with unmetered traffic? I played DarkGalaxy one month at home and we got a ~95€ bill, my dad wasn’t amused. Literally just DG’s website once a day.
I don't remember worrying about data usage. I got into wardriving and was torrenting from neighbors unsecured linksys ssids. Will never forget that warm feeling of hearing netstumbler pings picking up new APs.
I mean, sure, but at some point with 3 or 4 thousand cds crated up, it became a lot easier to steal than go crate digging in my own basement. And then when what.cd happened and you could literally grab a torrent of perfectly curated files of an artist’s whole catalog, the laziness really spiked.
Unfortunately, that kind of hyper-atomism isn't really an effective argument if you don't already agree with the premise being presented. To make matters worse, the law is a collection of postulates. It can give itself the predetermination of any high-level conclusion it wants, and no amount of reasoning or appeal to lower principles will ever matter.
In otherwords, it's theft if the law says it is. Simple as that.
Only if you operate under the misguided assumption that the law cannot be wrong. I care less for legalese than morals. Its plainly not theft, regardless of the hand wringing of bureaucrats and gatekeepers.
What? The context of the conversation was about piracy which is a distinct legal fiction, it's inherently grounded in the law's opinion, so yes necessarily the law cannot be wrong in this context, that's incoherent. An idiosyncratic disagreement with the law isn't saying anything relevant to the discussion.
Consider a random example of fair use: print an excerpt of this three panel comic you would like to discuss.
Does building a business around the automation of fair use constitute fair use? I would say no.
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