Nvidia scraped videos from Youtube and several other sources to compile training data for its AI products, internal Slack chats, emails, and documents obtained by 404 Media show.
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.” Internal conversations at Nvidia viewed by 404 Media show when employees working on the project raised questions about potential legal issues surrounding the use of datasets compiled by academics for research purposes and YouTube videos, managers told them they had clearance to use that content from the highest levels of the company.
Technically a human could watch all the videos on YouTube. But if a human were to cut together bits of each video to make a new one that would probably be an infringement. But if a human saw a video and wanted to recreate it that might be allowed depending on how close to the original they got. It points out some glaring issues with modern copyright law. I don’t know what the solution is, but if a multinational tech giant is doing it, it should probably be illegal.
