Posted by dworks 7/6/2025
Edit: Or an argument as to why this IP theft is fine while that used in training isn't. I'm sure some of that training data was CC-SA licensed for instance ;)
Outright theft is a meaningless term here. The new rules are different.
The AI space is built on "traditionally" bad faith actions. Misappropriation of IP by using pirated content and ignoring source code licenses. Borderline malicious website scraping. Recitation of data without attribution. Copying model code / artifacts / weights is just the next most convenient course of action. And really, who cares? The ethical operating standards of the industry have been established.
No one knows how any of the models got made, their training data is kept secret, we don't know what it contains, and so on. I'm also pretty sure a few of the main models poached each others employees which just reimplemented the same training models with some twists.
Most LLMs are also based on initial research papers where most of the discovery and innovation took place.
And in the very end, it's all trained on data that very few people agreed or intended would be used for this purpose, and for which they all won't see a dime.
So why not wrap and rewrap models and resell them, and let it all compete for who offers the cheapest plan or per-token cost?