Even when employees raised legal and ethical concerns, managers reportedly told them that the company’s practice of scraping millions of hours of videos from YouTube, Netflix, and other data sets was “an executive decision” in one instance and called “an open legal issue” in another.

If you were still on the fence regarding the ongoing debate about the legal and ethical aspects of where AI companies get their training data, this might be enough to make you pick a side.

Won’t somebody please think of the creators?

cool cool cool cool cool cool now leaked NVIDIA slack messages discussing which YouTube channels to scrape videos from. MKBHD videos? Yeah grab those too. https://t.co/0XczvTNVBH

— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) August 5, 2024

Nvidia has opted to stick to its guns regarding its unscrupulous scraping, as Cole writes, “When asked about legal and ethical aspects of using copyrighted content to train an AI model, Nvidia defended its practice as being “in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of copyright law.”

Well, the leaked Slack conversations and emails from the team working on a project codenamed ‘Cosmos’ tell a different story.

As does YouTube’s CEO Neal Mohan who said in April that using YouTube to train AI models is a “clear violation” of the platform’s terms. Back then, he was responding to reports that OpenAI used YouTube videos to train its Sora text-to-video generator.

Just last month, AI startup Runway came under the same fire in another 404 Media report that it used YouTube videos and other pirated content as training data without proper permission. Can you see the pattern yet?

Read More: AI propels Nvidia into the stratosphere

Training an AI model on video content isn’t inherently bad. HD-VG-130M is a video data set of 130 million YouTube videos compiled specifically for training AI models by researchers at Peking University in China. The important differences are that a) this dataset’s videos are in the open domain and b) it is protected by a licence that specifies it can only be used as training for academic research.

“Any content from HD-VG-130M dataset is available for academic research purposes only. You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, trade, or exploit for any commercial purposes,” states the licence agreement.

While Nvidia does contribute to that sort of research, the leaked communications clearly indicate that ‘Cosmos’ isn’t that sort of research.

“Emails from the project’s leadership to employees show that the goal of Cosmos was to build a state-of-the-art video foundation model “that encapsulates simulation of light transport, physics, and intelligence in one place to unlock various downstream applications critical to NVIDIA,” writes Cole.

Read the full 404 Media report with leaked screenshots here.

The post Nvidia reportedly sanctioned video scraping to train AI model according to leaked docs appeared first on Stuff South Africa.

The NMPA’s lawsuit is on behalf of seventeen music publishers (including Sony and Universal) who themselves are working with some of the industry’s “best” artists. The suit was filed in Tennessee’s federal court, with the claim that Twitter “fuels its business with countless infringing copies of musical compositions, violating Publishers’ and others’ exclusive rights under copyright law.”

“Twitter, play Despacito“

Specifically, the NMPA attacked Twitter’s infringement of these 1,700 songs, with its publishers stating that these were included in various copyright notices to Twitter, which has reportedly done nothing about it, allegedly ignoring “known repeat infringers and known infringements”. The NMPA hopes to fine the platform $150,000 per violation if the court agrees. We’re hardly math geniuses, but the fines could total around $255 million if the court agrees.

Unlike Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat, Musk’s venture is one of the few social media platforms without a music licensing deal in place. The NMPA feels that this gives Twitter an “unfair advantage” over those competitors, who all pay the necessary fees to compensate artists (also known as their labels) for the use of their music.

Read More: Twitter is refusing to pay Google for cloud services. Here’s why it matters, and what the fallout could be for users

Had Musk not taken over Twitter in October of last year, it’s possible the issue would have been swept under the rug. According to The New York Times, and the unnamed employees at the company it cites, the company had cut a music licensing deal that would amount to over $100 million per year, with the Times later reporting that the deal had come to a standstill in the excitement of Musk’s purchase.

The NMPA has said the company’s “change in ownership in October 2022 has not led to improvements in how it acts with respect to copyright,” adding, “On the contrary, Twitter’s internal affairs regarding matters pertinent to this case are in disarray.”

Whether the doom-scrolling platform and the NMPA can come to an understanding before the suit is over remains to be seen. It’s unlikely, but possible – especially with someone other than Musk in charge of the day-to-day. That’s certainly what NMPA president David Israelite is after, suit or no, judging by a tweet made when Musk announced his intent to replace himself as Twitter’s CEO.

The post Twitter could take a $250 million hit from the music industry appeared first on Stuff South Africa.