Microsoft Sued By Authors Over Use of Books in AI Training (reuters.com) 14
Microsoft has been hit with a lawsuit by a group of authors who claim the company used their books without permission to train its Megatron artificial intelligence model. From a report: Kai Bird, Jia Tolentino, Daniel Okrent and several others alleged that Microsoft used pirated digital versions of their books to teach its AI to respond to human prompts. Their lawsuit, filed in New York federal court on Tuesday, is one of several high-stakes cases brought by authors, news outlets and other copyright holders against tech companies including Meta Platforms, Anthropic and Microsoft-backed OpenAI over alleged misuse of their material in AI training.
[...] The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that gives text responses to user prompts.
[...] The writers alleged in the complaint that Microsoft used a collection of nearly 200,000 pirated books to train Megatron, an algorithm that gives text responses to user prompts.
Model Name (Score:5, Informative)
Even the name of the model is stolen.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe. If Hasbro (the owner of the Megatron trademark) chooses to ignore Microsoft's use of the name, then there is nothing blocking Microsoft from using the name. It's up to trademark holders to sue to protect their marks.
Re: (Score:2)
If they don't defend it then they can lose it, and it will become fair game for everyone else, too.
Re: (Score:2)
First, "Megatron" may be trademarked by Hasbro, but only the in the name of a character for a toy. You can look it up very easily on the USPTO website.
https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNu... [uspto.gov]
If you do a search, there are a half dozen other companies claiming the exact same trademark. One uses it as a name for their jumbotron system. Another is for wine. A few for control systems, and a RV.
https://tmsearch.uspto.gov/sea... [uspto.gov]
There's also a bunch of dead listings for that as well.
Many people can share a trademark - as
Re: (Score:2)
It's the name of a character which is a sentient robot. Using the name for an AI is probably close enough to overlap.
Re: (Score:2)
No, the theme of a name is not sufficient. The industry matters. No one is confusing Megatron the fictional character in a comic book universe with an AI tool. Trademark law exists to protect names *within* and industry, not across them. It's not even about AI or not, you'd simply not be able to use the name Megatron for any character in a movie or book robot, AI or otherwise. It's a name already trademarked in the industry.
Re: (Score:2)
It's the name of a character which is a sentient robot. Using the name for an AI is probably close enough to overlap.
Since close enough is the new metric for trademark violation, I heard Hasbro is registering a Viagra alternative for billionaires with tiny dicks.
Heard it’s got a catchy name too. “Microsoft”.
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Maybe. If Hasbro (the owner of the Megatron trademark) chooses to ignore Microsoft's use of the name, then there is nothing blocking Microsoft from using the name. It's up to trademark holders to sue to protect their marks.
Which is ironic, since the story is about Microsoft using other people’s works without permission.
Perhaps Hasbro should stand with the other victims. Give them a fighting chance against those who appear to be arrogantly in the wrong. Par for the course they didn’t get fined enough on. Clearly.
Re: (Score:2)
Ironic indeed.
When will Google get the Vulcan Hello? (Score:3)
Meta already did it (Score:1)
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Time for these book authors (who want people to buy and read their books) to realize that an AI training by reading your book is... ...no different than my fifteen year old reading your book and better understanding words, phrases, sentences, constructs, analogies,
metaphors, and what an awful spite-filled piece of shit author you are.
If you don't want your work read, analyzed, stored, or value, take your pen and keyboard and shove both deeply up your "I'm an
author and I get
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Meta already did it (Score:1)
Is the issue that MS used the books or that MS didn't pay to use the books in question?
And if MS used the books without paying, did they do it knowingly, or were the works simply swept-up as they crawled the public web for raw data to 'learn' from?
The authors beef is with the individuals that pirated the books, not the people (or companies) that stumbled across the pirated works on the public internet. How would a casual web surfer (or AI model) know these works were illegal?